Color Harmonies in the Spring Garden— By Mrs. Francis King, is 



NOW, WHEN THE SPRING BULBS ARE IN FLOWER, IS THE TIME TO STUDY THE NICETIES 

 OF THEIR COLOR DISTINCTIONS — MAKE NOTES NOW FOR YOUR FALL ORDERS OF BULBS 



IN THESE words, Spring Flowers, there 

 is very music. There is a delicious 

 harmony in all of Nature's colors, and par- 

 ticularly in the colors of all native spring 

 flowers, as they appear with each other in 

 their own environment. If any one doubts 

 what I say, let him look at such pictures as 

 are found in Flemwell's "Flowers of the 

 Alpine Valleys," let him take up Mrs. 

 Allingham's "Happy England"; or let him 

 in May wander in the nearest woodlot and 

 see a lovely tapestry of pale color woven of 

 the pink of spring beauties, the delicate 

 lavenders of hepatica, and the faint yellow 

 of the dog tooth violet — thousands of tiny 

 blooms crowding each other for space, but 

 all very good. 



Perhaps, next to the snowdrop, crocus 

 is the earliest of the cultivated bulbs- to 

 bloom in our wintry region. The matter 

 of color mixtures here comes to the fore. I 

 admit this to be a question of personal 

 taste; but it is one on which discussion 

 should be agreeable and fruitful. It hap- 

 pens that I object to a mixture of colors 

 in crocus, or, for that matter, in anything. 

 Not long ago a well known landscape 



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gardener, a woman, remarked that a border 

 of mixed Darwin tulips was one of the most 

 successful of her many plantings. In such 

 a hand, this I am sure was so. If such 

 planting were done exactly as it should be, 

 with sufficient boldness, a sure knowledge 

 of what was wanted, and great variety of 

 colors and tones of those colors, the result 

 would surely show a tapestry again thrown 

 along the earth — a tapestry grander in 

 conception and more glorious in kind than 

 the one woven of the tiny blossoms men- 

 tioned above. But with the average 

 gardener, a mixture so-called, is a thing 

 of danger. What more hopeless than a 

 timid one! "Be bold, be bold, but not too 

 bold" — Shakespearean advice holds here. 

 To return to crocus. A while ago in the 

 borders of this small Michigan place of ours, 

 there was in one place a most lovely carpet 

 of colonies of pale lavender crocus Maxi- 

 milian, with grape hyacinth (Muscari 

 azureum) running in and out in peninsulas, 

 bays, and islands. Tall white crocus Reine 

 Blanche, in large numbers, was near by, its 

 translucent petals shining in the sun beyond 

 its more delicately colored neighbors. 



I believe I have before expatiated in 

 these columns on the great beauty of Cro- 

 cus purpurea,va.r.gratidiflora,ca.rpetmg large 

 spaces of bare ground beneath shrubbery, 

 principally used in connection with great 

 sheets of Scilla Sibirica which blooms so 

 very little later than the crocus as to make 

 the two practically simultaneous. These, 

 in order to get a telling effect, should be 

 planted by the thousands, and this, I beg to 

 assure the reader, is a less serious financial 

 observation than it sounds ! 



Hepatica that year bloomed with Iris 

 reticulata. As an experiment I arranged the 

 following spring some groups of this smart 

 little iris, with hepatica plants threading 

 their way among the grass-like leaves of the 

 iris, and nearby a few hundreds of Muscari 

 azureum. The cool delicate pinks of the 

 hepatica were in most lovely accord with 

 the rich violet of the iris, yet affording a 

 striking contrast in form and a full octave 

 apart in depth and height of tone. Is there 

 a valid objection to thus using imported 

 and native plants side by side? I know 

 Ruskin would have hated it, but the great 

 mid- Victorian man probably never had a 





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Bembrandt and Darwin tulips as they grow in their country of origin. The first-named next to the walk, are distinguished by absence of vellow 



236 



