330 THE GARDEN OF A 



season. For many months I have gathered and 

 arranged flowers of all kinds in all ways, giving 

 especial thought and love to the decoration of the 

 table, striving to group the flowers according to 

 their meaning as well as to the day and meal. 



Of this one thing I am sure, that the rarest 

 colours are those that are least effective by them- 

 selves. Take blue, for example. We have fewer 

 true blue garden flowers than any others lobelias, 

 centaurea, larkspur, a lily or two, forget-me-nots, lu- 

 pins, scillas, hyacinths, and a few more, but to be 

 effective they need white as a foil. My blue alcove 

 would have been dull indeed but for an edging of 

 white candytuft, while the loops and spires of lark- 

 spur seemed out of place amid its green foliage until 

 an underlying mass of white feverfew came in bloom 

 and made a setting. The beauty of a sapphire is 

 unrevealed until it is mated with a diamond. 



If the cultivated garden at any time does not 

 yield flowers of the right expressiveness for the 

 flower language of the table, the wild garden will 

 always supplement it. All summer I have striven 

 to have" the breakfast flowers more delicate and of 

 paler colours than those for the later, heavier meals. 

 In May white narcissi with their own foliage in a 

 slender green vase at breakfast, rich tulips in a 



