12 Making a Garden to Bloom This Year 
only when one is shown in much greater 
proportion than the other. Red, which is 
the complementary to green, is delightful 
with it in the proportion which Nature 
gives us when she covers a plant with blos- 
soms or fruit, burying the green of its 
foliage beneath the mass, so that only a 
small part of it shows. Note, by the 
way, that only a small part of a plant’s 
foliage ever does show, for the mass is 
broken by the shadows lying among the 
leaves and the high lights which they re- 
flect. The opposite proportion, seen in 
the red of holly berries against the glossy 
leaves, is lovely, too. But red and green 
together in anything like equal amounts 
are nerve-raspers. 
Many blue flowers have orange centers, 
but it is only a touch at the center — very 
little in comparison with the amount of 
blue displayed. Likewise there are yellow 
and purple combinations of the most rav- 
ishing loveliness, but always the yellow is 
in the ascendant or the purple ; they are 
never equally displayed. Iris is an ex- 
ample of this ; so are pansies. These two 
colors, however, clash less than either of 
the other possible combinations, probably 
