COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



Ribbon Grass or Gardeners' Garters — known to all frequenters 

 of old gardens, or loiterers along country by-ways, that 

 seems to belong naturally among Sweet Williams and Fox- 

 gloves and faint lavender Canterbury Bells and is not by 

 any means to be despised as a garden decoration. 



The well-known Golden Feather (Pyrethrum partheni- 

 folium aureum), upon which the faith of all bedders-out used 

 once to be pinned to insure a permanent yellow glare, is yet 

 a pretty edging for blue and yellow and white flowers. To 

 keep it shapely and full its aspiring tendencies may be 

 nipped back, and it should be started in the house in 

 February or March. 



There are many other plants of varying merit with 

 "golden" or "silver" variegated foliage; the quaint, country- 

 looking Euphorbia, known as Snow-on-the-mountain, the 

 golden-leaved Coltsfoot (Tussilago), good for a ground 

 cover beneath shrubs, or to spread over banks of heavy 

 clay where little else will grow; the pretty Periwinkle, 

 perhaps the most used to-day of these plants; the very old- 

 fashioned Valeriana Phu aurea; the really charming golden- 

 leaved Thyme, and many others. 



But of all the coloured leaved plants and shrubs none is 

 so really beautiful and so entirely indispensable as those 

 that wear the silvery or bluish tones. These fill a place in 

 the garden that no other plants can fill; among the gay 

 garden flowers, the trails and mounds and breadths of 

 soft neutral foliage soothe our colour-excited nerves and 

 give us great aesthetic pleasure. We do not usually take 

 gray into consideration as a garden colour, yet there are so 

 many really fine plants that wear it, or variations upon its 



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