sown in tins and planted out. It has a way of finding just the 

 right spots in which to grow, and will come up between the 

 stones of a path in a rock-garden or in the crevices of a wall 

 where it blooms early and disappears when the days are really 

 hot, but next year it will be there or thereabouts again. 



Conspicuous in the garden now are three Podalyria bushes 

 with white flowers, sports from seed produced at the National 

 Botanic Gardens, Kirstenbosch. The ordinary pink-flowered 

 form is very beautiful with its pink sweet-pea flowers on a 

 silver-leaved bush, but the white ones are particularly lovely, 

 having dark green leaves as a background for the dainty white 

 blossoms. The scent of both is entrancing. 



Yesterday the big brown Afrikanders (Gladiolus grandis) 

 were at their best on the bulb plot, their two-foot wire-thin 

 stems swaying in the breeze. In their natural state among tall 

 grasses and bush the flowers are almost invisible, their brown 

 speckled blooms with the long crinkled segments fading into 

 nothingness against their background ; but at sunset they 

 may be traced by their scent. The brown colour then changes 

 to dove-grey and back to brown with sunrise. What the con- 

 nection is between the changing of the colour and the giving 

 off of the scent I have never discovered. They should be 

 grown in semi-shade amongst bushes or tall-growing plants ; 

 in full sun their delicate blooms are apt to be scorched. 



10 



