COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



From very small gardens the strong-growing Asters like 

 those of the novae-angliae and novi-beligii sections are best 

 excluded and choice made among the more slender growing 

 amellus, acris, ericoides, and cordifolius varieties. 



No plants at our disposal are more suitable and effective 

 for naturalizing than the Hardy Asters. They are entirely 

 able to take care of themselves in waste places, along stream- 

 sides, or upon dry, rough banks, soon spreading into great 

 breadths of lovely colour and mingling with the Golden 

 Rod, Sunflowers, and flaming autumn leaves in entire 

 felicity. They should be planted in broad, irregular groups, 

 the tall, strong-growing novae-angliae and novi-belgii, tatari- 

 cus and grandiflorus varieties toward the back with the more 

 slender and dwarf sorts in a careless fringe along the edge of 

 the plantation. Many will grow in shady places. Of these 

 are cordifolius, corymbosus, laevis, undulatus, divaricatus, 

 and acuminatus. Others crave the boggy comfort of swamps 

 and stream-sides. There we find radula, Tradescanti, 

 longifolius, and puniceus pulcherrimus. This last is a very 

 fine plant growing five feet tall and bearing great pyramidal 

 heads of faintly coloured blossoms with curiously incurved 

 petals and yellow centres. 



For two of the wild Asters (unimproved) I have a special 

 fondness. One is A. cordifolius, the Heart-leaved Aster, 

 also called Bee Weed and Bee Tongue; the other is A. 

 linariifolius. Aster cordifolius is a graceful thing of dense, 

 spraylike flowering in late September. Its colour is in- 

 determinate, now gray, now white, now faintly flushed, ac- 

 cording to the light and probably influenced by the soil 

 in which it grows. My children say it is the colour of the 



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