182 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



them to choose from nearly equal in length to the phlox list; 

 and what with Salvia Azurea, with its almost sky-blue flowers, 

 with Artemisia lactifiora, that lovely spirea-looking thing which 

 blooms with me in late September, with gladiolus such as America, 

 Sulphur King, Peace, Baron Hulot (small but of the richest violet 

 known to growers) ; no end of bewitching color combinations may 

 be had in September of flowers which no drought can corrupt, 

 no worm or grub break through and steal. 



As I write a bit of winter landscape lies before me; but I have 

 been thinking of flowers, of summer; I do not feel the cold, I hardly 

 see the snow ; I see as in a dream what I saw last summer, the great 

 prairies stretching for some miles back of the beautiful city of 

 Tacoma. At the far extremity of one of these prairies, where 

 groups of firs are seen in noble arrangement or so superbly set as 

 to present an appearance of the utmost achievement of landscape 

 art; at the far edge we drive among a grove of the beautiful dark 

 trees and come suddenly upon a rustic gateway dripping with 

 pale pink rambler roses. 



We pass inside the gate between short bordering beds of hybrid 

 perpetual roses, turn sharply to the right and behold one of the 

 most lovely flowering vistas it has ever been my good luck to see 

 real and living. It seems painted; it is too good to be true, this 

 artist's arrangement of colors within a long pergola built of sap- 

 Hngs with the bark still upon them. "I made it all myself," 

 delightedly exclaims our hostess as our unconcealed surprise and 

 pleasure in this lovely garden effect flows forth in excited talk. On 

 the right entering the pergola — a pergola with a raison d'etre 

 for it conducts from gate to house — grey foliage of pinks, Can- 

 terbury bells back of those; further down masses of Shasta daisies, 

 gigantic here in stature; beyond those clouds of the grey gypso- 

 phila and then a delicious mass of color in tones ranging from pale 

 lavender to deepest purple, the flowers most excellently massed, 

 an effect of carelessness which is supremest art. Among the flowers 

 used, the hyacinth-flowered candytuft, which Burpee sends out, 

 here appearing in pinkish mauve, deep purplish pink and white; 

 purple pansies snuggling among these; rich purple annual larkspur, 

 sending up a few spires here and there; and climbing above all a 

 lavender and mauve sweet pea; faint notes of the color below 



