The Charm of Color 239 
plants of such modest bearing are weeds, and pull 
them up, with many other precious seedlings of 
the old garden, in their desire to have ample expanse 
of naked dirt. One of the charms which was per- 
mitted to the old garden was its fulness. Nature 
there certainly abhorred a vacant space. The garden 
soil was full of resources ; it had a seed for every 
square inch ; it seemed to have a reserve store ready 
to crowd into any space offered by the removal or 
dying down of a plant at any time. 
Let me tell of a curious thing I found in an old 
book, anent our subject — green flowers. It shows 
that we must not accuse our modern sensation 
lovers, either in botany or any other science, of 
being the only ones to add artifice to nature. The 
green Carnation has been chosen to typify the 
decadence and monstrosity of the end of the nine- 
* 
teenth century ; but nearly two hundred years ago 
a London fruit and flower grower, named Richard 
Bradley, wrote a treatise upon field husbandry and 
garden culture, and in it he tells of a green Carna- 
tion which “ a certayn fryar^ produced by grafting 
a Carnation upon a Fennel stalk. The flowers 
were green for several years, then nature overcame 
decadent art. 
There be those who are so enamoured of the color 
green and of foliage, that they care little for flowers 
of varied tint ; even in a garden, like the old poet 
Marvell, they deem, — 
“No white nor red was ever seen 
So amorous as this lovely green. 
