COLOR HARMONY 



THE broadest consideration of color in gar- 

 dening would turn our minds to the gen- 

 eral color effect of a garden in relation to its large 

 setting of country. Was it not Ruskin who, in 

 spite of his rages at the average mid-Victorian 

 garden, said that gardens as well as houses should 

 be of a general color to harmonize with the sur- 

 rounding country certain tones for the simple 

 blue country of England, others for the colder 

 gray country of Italy ? Never was sounder color 

 advice given than that contained in the following 

 lines from one of the Oxford Lectures: "Bluish 

 purple is the only flower color which nature ever 

 used in masses of distant effect; this, however, 

 she does in the case of most heathers with the 

 rhododendron (ferrugineum) , and less extensively 

 with the colder color of the wood hyacinth; ac- 

 cordingly, the large rhododendron may be used 

 to almost any extent in masses; the pale varieties 

 of the rose more sparingly, and on the turf the 

 3 



