COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



yellow cup above a widely spreading whorl of shining, 

 deeply cut leaves. It is one of the plants good to naturalize 

 upon grassy banks and beneath lightly shadowing trees 

 where the roots will not be disturbed by the continuous 

 digging and cultivating that must needs be carried on in 

 the borders. Old books call it the Winter's Wolfsbane and 

 like other members of its family group — the Ranunculaceae 

 — it is poisonous, though not so deadly as the beautiful 

 Monkshood of the midsummer garden. 



Still another member of this family that wears its yellow 

 garb jauntily is the Spring Adonis (Adonis vernalis), that bears 

 large yellow flowers — a little sharp in colour but quite in 

 harmony with the scheme of the season — upon stems a foot 

 tall above the whorls of anemone-like leaves. And before 

 March is very far under way comes the first Crocus. 



A little candlelight at a gray wall, 

 One dauntless moment snatched from the March brawl 

 And, like the candlelight, to be forgot. 



This, in my garden, is Crocus Imperati but it is closely fol- 

 lowed by C. biflorus (the little Scotch Crocus sometimes called 

 Cloth of Silver), C. vernus, and the splashes of molten 

 gold — the hottest colour in the whole spring garden — that 

 proclaim the Cloth-of-Gold Crocus (C. susianus), and then 

 the great vase-shaped Dutch Crocuses. The earliest Cro- 

 cuses we tuck in about the feet of the hardy little Mezereum 

 that sometimes gives a hurried flowering in February, that 

 they may not be alone and may form a little spring picture. 

 Daphne Mezereum is a curious lilac-pink in colour and there 

 is a sort whose blossoms are white. I am very fond of the 



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