COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



of our little river before our hearts have had enough of 

 warmth and sunshine, but ministers to our eagerness in 

 spring by the haste of its rosy flowering; the White Poplar 

 with its slim, straight stalk and restless, silver-lined leaves; 

 and the strange Tamarack, the deciduous conifer, that 

 makes the swamps in northern New Jersey so impregnable 

 to the rambling pedestrian. Nor need we lack true ever- 

 greens in low, damp places, for the Norway Spruce and the 

 Douglas Fir thrive whole-heartedly in such situations and 

 I know from observation in my own neighbourhood that 

 the slim Red Cedar rears its strict proportions in many a 

 veritable bog, shouldering the Viburnums and Dogwoods 

 like one born to the marsh. 



Of fine shrubs for our water margin there is no end. The 

 exquisite white Swamp Azalea (Azalea viscosa) with its 

 penetrating fragrance creates charming groups with a 

 long flowering in July and August; its lovely sister of the 

 earlier year, the Pinxter Flower (Azalea nudiflora), shakes 

 out its rose-coloured scarf of airy, fringy flowers along the 

 pond to the delight of all loiterers by the way; and the 

 Rhodora, Emerson's "rival of the Rose," that haunts the 

 sluggish streams of the northeast and is a truly beautiful 

 shrub. Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote of the 

 Rhodora thus happily, "On the margins of some quiet 

 swamp a myriad of bare twigs seem suddenly overspread 

 with purple butterflies, and we know that the Rhodora is in 

 bloom." 



Others of the Heath family suitable for our purpose are 

 the Swamp Laurel (Kalmia glauca) a low, slender-stemmed 

 evergreen with lilac-pink flowers in April or early May, and 



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