Stachys lanata (Woundwort), Silver leaved sage, and even 
Mesemhryanthemum, not to mention a dozen others. I used to 
put them in "for variety," I stupidly thought to myself. It 
was not until visiting a garden in Bar Harbor that I realized 
how the thing should be done. It was a garden designed and 
planted by Beatrix Ferrand, where high and intense color was 
wanted. Most of the color was insured by the use of the 
perennials we all know and plant. But in one respect her plant- 
ing was more knowing than ours. In order to keep the color 
keyed up, Mrs. Ferrand had hidden so far as possible, the green 
foliage of the perennials behind the whitish grey leaves of 
common and uncommon grey- foliage plants. Very little green 
could be seen in the beds. The flowers rose from grey and white 
borders. And the effect was as much gayer and brighter than 
the usual planting as a luminous Monet is more full of light than 
a Claude. Plant material is interesting to scientists and to artists 
in gardening. The former buries his interest in the individual 
flower and in its cultivation. The artist, too, finds pleasure in 
individual flower and plant. But his uses reach much further 
than horticulture. Plants are the materials with which to paint 
his compositions in terms of living things. Two flowers that 
enhance each other are apt to be more lovely than one alone. 
But endless combinations of lovely flowers are only a begin- 
ning for the artist. In a vase a flower combination may be a 
picture. But in the garden, one seeks more than combinations 
of flowers, more than pattern beds, more than the trees and 
shrubs that enclose, more than any one part that goes to make 
up the whole garden. One cannot stop short of the whole, the 
living composition from the tallest tree to the tiniest flower 
that must be related, combined or separated, so that in every 
direction, from every angle, near or far, one sees a picture that 
makes one long for the power to fix this thing forever with 
paint and canvas. This attitude of the Garden Club of 
America elevates it above the horticultural societies, useful 
as they always are. In exhibitions our efforts turn toward 
arrangements of plant material, with or without other things, 
rather than toward superlative specimens of individual plants 
or blossoms, such as more fittingly belong to horticulturists. 
A true-hearted gardener's composition of daisies and butter- 
cups from the field can be more beautiful than one stiff stalk 
of the most gorgeous larkspur ever brought to perfection by 
a horticulturist. That is the true message on Plant Material 
of the Garden Club. Its truth is tested by the hope and en- 
couragement that it offers. For it reveals to the village 
cottager that she can create beauty with weeds from the 
meadow and it rebukes the purseproud for supposing that 
they can buy beauty by paying for a greenhouse and the 
services of a corps of inartistic "Gardeners." 
43 
