THE WELL-CONSIDERED GARDEN 



a wonderful field of color from which to choose; 

 so does the dahUa tribe. It is easy to see that the 

 glaring faults in color planting in our gardens are 

 not due to lack of good material. 



The question of absolute color is a very nice 

 question indeed, and reminds one of the old prov- 

 erb of one man's meat being another man's poison. 

 We cannot say that a given color is ugly. Its 

 beauty or lack of 'beauty depends upon its rela- 

 tion to other colors. To announce that one dis- 

 likes mauve is not to prove mauve unbeautiful. 

 Most of us who have prejudices against a certain 

 color would be amazed at the effect upon our color 

 sense of the offensive hue when judiciously used 

 with correlated tones. For instance, what com- 

 moner than to hear this exclamation as one wan- 

 ders in an August garden where a clump of tall 

 phloxes have reverted to the magenta, despised 

 of most of us, and where the hostess's shears have 

 been spared, to the spoiling of the garden: "What 

 a horrible color has that phlox taken on!" But 

 take that same group of flowering stems another 

 year, back it by the pale spires of Physostegia 

 Virginica rosea, see that the phlox Lord Rayleigh 

 blooms beside it, that a good lavender like Antonin 

 Mercie is hard by, let some masses of rich purple 



6 



