CHAPTER VIII 



THE FLOWER BORDER IN AUGUST 



By the second week of August the large flower border 

 is coming to its best. The western grey end, with its 

 main planting of hoary and glaucous foliage — Yucca, 

 Sea-kale, Cineraria maritima, Rue, El57mus, Santohna, 

 Stachys, &c. — now has Yucca flaccida in flower. 

 This neat, small Yucca, one of the varieties or near 

 relatives of filamentosa, is a grand plant for late summer. 

 A well-established clump throws up a quantity of 

 flower-spikes of that highly ornamental character 

 that makes the best of these fine plants so valuable. 

 White Everlasting Pea, planted about three feet 

 from the back, is trained on stout pea-sticks over the 

 space occupied earlier by the Delphiniums and the 

 Spiraeas. A little of it runs into a bush of Golden 

 Privet. This Golden Privet is one of the few shrubs 

 that have a place in the flower border. Its clean, 

 cheerful, bright yellow gives a note of just the right 

 colour all through the summer. It has also a solidity, 

 of aspect that enhances by contrast the graceful lines 

 of the foliage of a clump of the great Japanese striped 

 grass Eulalia, which stands within a few feet of it, 

 seven feet high, shooting upright, but with the ends 

 of the leaves recurved. 



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