COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



asperated by the arrival of plants that in their flowering 

 show the strange off-tones of the magenta group. It is not 

 among the accepted colours of the garden; we do not plan 

 for it, nor seek it, though it is often thrust upon us; so what 

 chance has the poor colour to come again into its own, for 

 it is believed to have been the "royal purple" of the 

 ancients. 



Custom hangs upon us with a weight 

 Heavy as frost and deep almost as life. 



It is the custom to despise magenta. It is hustled out of 

 our gardens and out of our consciousness and no one has 

 eyes to see the imperial scarf of magenta Phlox that stoops 

 to bind the dusty roadside, or the riot of tender colour in the 

 neglected cottage dooryard where Petunias have sown and 

 resown themselves and flutter about the gray and rotting 

 porch and squeeze through the gray and rotting palings of 

 the fence in exquisite harmony with the weathered wood. 



I am so fond of this colour and its kindred tints and 

 shades that to come across in The Garden, December 11, 

 1915, the following article by Clarence Eliot in its praise, 

 was a great pleasure and I cannot refrain from using it in 

 defence of my beloved magenta blossoms. 



In some circles it needs as much moral hardihood to say that one likes 

 magenta as it does to confess that one dislikes cold baths. Some folks 

 seem hardly to like to use the word magenta, as though it were unclean, and 

 resort instead to "rosy-purple." This seems as bad as softening "cold 

 bath" into "soapy-tepid." As a matter of fact, however, real true ma- 

 genta is a very rare colour among flowers. Callirhoe pulchella is one of 

 the truest examples, and the glossy silky texture of its petals seems to 

 enhance the glowing brilliance of the colour. The most splendid examples 



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