COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



branches closely set with linear leaves and at the top a 

 carelessly fashioned head of long-rayed flowers. The variety 

 nana grows but a foot tall and is a delightful subject for 

 the front ranks of the borders; Thomsoni is another fairly 

 early bloomer. It is a twiggy little plant about two feet in 

 height that contributes its sober gray-lilac bloom a bit 

 apologetically to this season of lavish gaiety. 



September, of course, is the heydey of the Michaelmas 

 Daisies. My garden is aswarm with them. All summer 

 long they have bided their time, pushing their way up 

 through the other perennials, keeping fresh and green their 

 sections of the borders, screening the blank places left by 

 biennials, until now, when here and there the Woodbine 

 throws out a scarlet signal, they sweep over the garden in 

 such a blend of tender colour and transcendent grace that 

 even the June garden in its crisp young maturity and 

 bountiful beauty is not fairer. All the crudeness of the late 

 summer is neutralized by the tide of tender colour, all bare 

 spaces are filled by the slender bloom-clouded branches. 

 This last festival of the garden is of a most rare and satis- 

 fying character. 



The lists of Michaelmas Daisies now offered us have 

 reached such a length that it is difficult to choose six or a 

 dozen sorts with which to deck out the autumn garden, but 

 there is a decided choice among them. Of the mallow-pink 

 sorts two stand preeminent — St. Egwin and Mrs. Perry 

 Improved. Both form sturdy bushes three to four feet" in 

 height completely covered with large flowers a full inch 

 across. Mrs. Perry and Perry's Pink are of the same type 

 and are nearly as fine. The former has the delicate mallow- 



304 



