COLOR HARMONY 



'T^HE very broadest consideration of color in 

 -•- gardening would turn our minds to the gen- 

 eral color effect of a garden in relation to its large 

 setting of country. Was it not Ruskin who, in 

 spite of his rages at the average mid- Victorian 

 garden, said that gardens as well as houses should 

 be of a general color to harmonize with the sur- 

 rounding country — certain tones for the simple 

 blue country of England, others for the colder 

 gray country of Italy? Never was sounder color 

 advice given than that contained in the following 

 lines from one of the Oxford Lectures: "Bluish 

 purple is the only flower color which nature ever 

 used in masses of distant effect; this, however, 

 she does in the case of most heathers — with the 

 rhododendron (ferrugineum), and less extensively 

 with the colder color of the wood hyacinth; ac- 

 cordingly, the large rhododendron may be used 

 to almost any extent in masses; the pale varieties 

 of the rose more sparingly, and on the turf the 



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