170 GARDENS OF ENGLAND 



remember a group of asters, Amellus hessarabicus, 

 and Acris near some fir trees, and shall never forget 

 the wonderful association of colour, the blues of 

 the asters and the deep foliage of the pines, a 

 picture to fill the true artist with joy. It is such 

 pictures as these that make English gardening a 

 pure delight ; the flowers of the woodland are made 

 to play their rightful part in the landscape — dashes 

 of colour which the commonplace bedding-out 

 cannot impart. 



I well remember a bright October day — it was 

 the first day of the month — ^pushing one's way 

 through the starwort groups — blues of every 

 shade — and listening to the music of the bees. 

 What a contrast to the conventional planting of 

 this graceful flower — bunched up as it often is in 

 the border, as if one were dealing with a stack of 

 corn. Looking across the valley from the other 

 side of this woodland of starworts the flowers 

 seemed as a blue mist, and this kind of planting 

 has not been sufficiently indulged in to become 

 monotonous. 



Then there is the border set apart entirely to 

 the finer varieties, and my first acquaintance with 

 such a feature was at Munstead, when at the time 

 Mr. Elgood was painting the wonderful sea of 



