COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



be glad enough to have a few bunches of the gay yellow 

 things about the garden, for their growth is graceful and 

 they may be drawn down over bare spaces in the borders. 

 But while all their ways are so gay and careless above 

 ground, beneath the surface their intentions are sinister: 

 they are forming an almost impregnable mat of roots in the 

 loose garden soil that spells destruction to any plant that 

 we are so unwise as to place near them. There is a sort 

 known as H. Maximilianii that I think may be a variety 

 of giganteus, whose great proportions would not be tolerated 

 within the garden enclosure save that it is often to be found 

 blooming in November. 



With the yellow Sunflowers I love to grow fluffy Boltonia 

 and the warm-coloured Iron weed (Vernonia arkansana). For 

 this last plant I am always pleased at the opportunity to 

 say a good word, for though it is a wild plant, quite un- 

 improved, and little used to cultivation, all its ways are 

 seemly. Its roots are stay-at-homes, its growth splendidly 

 upright, its colour imperial and gracious. There is no finer 

 plant of the late summer and early autumn for the back of 

 the border. There with sprays of yellow Sunflowers, in 

 spite of our efforts, groups of bluish Rue bushes and masses 

 of late white Phlox, it creates one of my favourite pictures. 

 The Ironweed is one of the few American plants that I do 

 not find appreciated by English gardeners. Now and then 

 I come upon it in lists of plants for special purposes, but 

 there is never the warm praise of its beauty and usefulness 

 that it undoubtedly deserves. 



For bold groups in the shrubbery there are several 

 yellow composites too large in scale for the borders. Of. 



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