THE GARDEN IN JUNE 



The flowering of the Columbine is the beginning of 

 summer. Tulips and Double Narcissi and stray 

 Anemones may still afford bright colour or sweet 

 fragrance, but they do not charm us any longer, for 

 they are of the spring, and the spring is past. What a 

 beautiful old flower it is — "the Columbine commendable," 

 as Skelton called it four hundred years ago ! Indeed, 

 all the old garden writers mention it, its vigour and grace 

 having always earned it a secure place in the English 

 garden, where it has been grown for centuries " for the 

 delight both of its form and colours." The Columbines 

 of our ancestors were all varieties of the wild English 

 species (^Aquilegia •uulgaris), and so vigorous and hand- 

 some do some of these plants become under garden 

 cultivation, that it is questionable if any of the newer 

 kinds surpass them in beauty. However, the various 

 species of Aquilegia which have from time to time been 

 added to our garden flora are to be counted with the 

 most valuable of plants, among the best of them being 

 the very curiously coloured red and orange species known 

 as A. Skinneri, the tall golden A. chrysantha, and, perhaps 

 most beautiful of all, the Rocky Mountain Columbine, 

 A. ccerulea, with its quaint green "horns of honey." 



This is the month when the Pyrethrums and Paeonies, 

 of which such splendid varieties have been raised by 

 Messrs. Kelway and others, are in their glory, as also 

 are the Snapdragons, Bride Gladioli, Pansies, Ranun- 

 culuses (of which the old R. asiaticus, though somewhat 

 tender, may be easily grown in rich light soil if planted 

 48 



