COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



In the garden the naked Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) 

 contributes a rich star harvest to this earliest festival of the 

 year. Sometimes a warm spell in January will spoil the 

 display, but ordinarily we may expect some time during the 

 strident month of March a dainty picture in a sheltered 

 corner of the garden; a shower of Jasmine stars upon the 

 garden wall, the ground carpeted with Winter Aconites 

 (Eranthis hyemalis), Snowdrops, and early Crocuses, and near 

 by the quaint flowering of the Spice Bush. How intensely 

 welcome are these flowers that come to us when there are 

 so few signs that winter has relaxed his clutch and when our 

 snow-bound imaginations are so eagerly seeking a sign. 



The Jasmine needs to be persuaded to the wall top by some 

 such decided hint as chicken wire spread upon the wall face. 

 Its preference is to scramble about over rough ground or 

 rocks — and very charming it is following its own whim — but 

 it also makes a handsome wall covering and its dark green 

 leafage is a fine background for gay flowers. Its wayward- 

 ness may be brought to serve a more conventional purpose 

 also if the long branches are kept cut back, thus forming a 

 little shrub, very useful for underplanting shrubs of greater 

 stature or tucked about where our flower- hungry eyes may 

 catch its yellow glint at the earliest possible moment. 



Both Snowdrop and Winter Aconite enjoy the light 

 shade of spreading Spice Bush and overhanging Jasmine 

 and spread and flower freely. The Winter Aconite is a 

 modest, old-fashioned flower, which, in the extravagance of 

 the later year, might pass unnoticed but at this season of 

 our eagerness seems a rare and precious blossom. It grows 

 from four to six inches in height, and carries its greenish- 



41 



