that K. L. B. takes to be Sahaa Sclarea is a very different plant. It is 
merely a form of the old Sage, growing about six inches high, with 
leaves of a tender "bloomy " purple turning off to grey, with the young 
shoots of deHcious creamy pink. I am now using it as a carpet to a 
grouping of pink Fyrus-Malus, pink Tamarick, red-purple Japanese 
maples, and your dainty "CaKco" bush. Its flowers are insignificant, 
and oh, pinch off! The variety of "Salvia Sclarea^' alluded to sounds 
like a child of mine which made such a sensation at Olympia where I 
showed it, and of which I sent seeds to your Vice-President. The seeds 
came originally from the Vatican garden, and it is a much more 
beautiful thing than Salvia Sclarea as generally seen. With me it will 
grow five feet high mth rosy bracts and pale blue tubular flowers, 
the pink and blue together giving a dehcious mauve effect. One great 
advantage is that after the first flush of beauty is over, the bracts 
take on a silvery hue and remain good looking for many weeks. It 
is supposed to be a descendant of the old English " Clary" from which 
a wine beloved of cottagers was brewed, and it has a pungent and 
aromatic scent. 
It may interest your readers to hear that it has now been proved 
thatapow^der has more power over rust on Hollyhocks than any spray. 
This powder can be obtained from Mr. Vert, the Hollyhock raiser, 
Saffron Walden, Essex. He has the most glorious varieties including 
the great fig-leaved Hollyhocks with single flowers, and that needs 
to be planted six feet away from one another. You may have noticed 
that Hollyhocks near a dusty country road flourish in any cottager's 
garden, while they fair even vnth the most tender "nourishing"' in 
the big gardens close by. 
Pray forgive this long screed. I have such delightful memories 
of some of the garden clubs where I gave talks, — Lenox, Short HiUs, 
Southampton, Lake Forest and others, that I feel I am talking to 
many old friends. 
I was so grieved to learn through the "Bulletin" of the death 
of Mrs. Renwick. She had been so busy experimenting with dahlias 
when I last heard from her. She is a great loss to all flower friends. 
I fear when I come over again, which I hope to do next autumn, that I 
shall find many blanks, as I hear my kind friend Mrs. Boardman has 
passed on also. They would have loved a little garden I am now mak- 
ing, formal, in shape of a diamond, grass walls, beds laid with lavender 
both sides and filled with weeping trees of pink Roses and Madonna 
LiUies and all around Hollyhocks in mauve and sulphur yellow, and 
pale pink and purple masses of them against a background of dark 
and shining Rhododendrons of great height, and carpeted with that 
lovely Nepeta, a Catmint, of mauve and silvery grey. The nurseryman 
will teU you that it does not seed, but it used to sow itself in gravelly 
57 
