42 MY GROWING GARDEN 



drop, and the twigs and branches are in bare 

 view for most of six months. It is therefore most 

 desirable to know how the subject in mind will 

 work into the fall and winter picture, as well as 

 what its budding, leafing and blooming earlier 

 will be like. 



I have been enjoying, these leafless days, the 

 warm yellow-gray tone of a young lilac that held 

 its foliage in solid green right through the early 

 frosts until December's sudden zero dropped them, 

 and I recognize a new merit in this pleasant twig 

 color. Some time the catalogues that offer me 

 nature-paints in plants with which to work out 

 year-round pictures will get to telling all about 

 their pigments, so that I may use them with 

 more assurance in an endeavor to get varieties 

 that have more than temporary attractiveness. 

 The reading of the bulletins of the wonderful 

 Arnold Arboretum, at Jamaica Plain, Massachu- 

 setts, has shown me how that world-master of 

 trees and shrubs, Professor Sargent, is continually 

 telling us unacute Americans of the real values of 

 ornamental plants at all seasons. Who would buy 

 furniture for his home that would be pleasant to 

 see only two or three months in the year? And 

 why should we furnish our gardens so wholly with 

 the plants that explode into one bloom burst, with 



