22 
House & G a r d e n 
THE TWELVE BEST FLOWERS FOR A GARDEN OF GOLD 
Here Are Those Which Will Fill the Garden with Sunshine Color 
the Season Through, from Daffodils in April to October Pompons 
GRACE TABOR 
A CURIOUS color, yellow; one that 
provokes great enthusiasm or great 
condemnation. Poets have made it synony¬ 
mous with melancholy, envy and jealousy. 
Modern slang has made it expressive of ail 
that is despicable in journalism. Always it 
has been applied, in the vernacular, to the 
coward and craven-spirited. 
Yet somewhere, someone has declared 
that yellow must be God’s favorite color— 
for is not the great orb of life as yellow as 
gold ? And is not gold, most precious of 
earth’s metals, yellower than anything else 
we know? And are there not more yellow 
butterflies than any other color? And does 
yellow not tinge all creation, from the wing 
of an oriole to the furry, low creeping cater¬ 
pillar? And is it not the hue of ripening 
grain, and of more dowers—the common, 
abundant dowers—than anyone can name ? 
Color psychology has long recognized 
yellow as the peculiar vibration that stimu¬ 
lates creative activity—the positive, asser¬ 
tive element in color. Anyone who has ever 
spent a few days or even hours in a room 
done in yellow, walls and all, will bear wit¬ 
ness to the truth of this. It speeds up the 
most sluggish in spirit and makes 
rest impossible. 
That is just the peculiar qual¬ 
ity of yellow as a color; it is 
stimulating. And those who like 
it, like it intensely, while those 
who flo not, hate it with an equal 
degree of fervor. 
The Yellow Garden of Cheer 
All these points are worth a 
thought, if you are going to make 
a yellow garden; and if I were 
you, and had the space, I should 
make a yellow garden some¬ 
where. Because a yellow garden 
is going to be a cheerer-up for 
dark days and dark moods. 
By the same law that puts blue 
dowers in cool, shadowy places, 
yellow dowers should go where 
the sunlight falls brightest all day 
long, where they will vie with its 
golden light and redect it back 
and intensify it a thousandfold. 
A yellow garden is a sun gar¬ 
den preeminently—a pool for 
sunlight storage, just as a blue 
garden is a reservoir for the in¬ 
finite reaches of the blue and 
wind-swept heavens. 
There is nothing subtle about 
yellow itself, but there are yellow 
dowers that show the most elu¬ 
sive timings. It is quite essential 
in arranging a yellow garden that 
these varying degrees of color be 
liberally introduced. Only such 
handling will avoid a dat, mo¬ 
notonous effect. 
1 he difficulty of choosing the 
plants for a yellow scheme of 
coloring lies in the embarrass¬ 
ment of riches. One scarcely 
knows how to omit so many that 
are excellent, yet must be omitted if too 
great variety is not to result. What shall 
be rejected, for example, among the daisy¬ 
shaped dowers ? There is the leopard's bane 
(Doronicum) , the sneeze-wort ( Hclenium ), 
the hardy sundowers (Helianthus), the rud- 
beckia or cone-dower, and the anthemis. All 
are good and choice is difficult. 
The Essential Flowers 
Instead of eliminating, it seems better to 
begin the other way about, listing those that 
are so important that they simply cannot 
be omitted. Among the daisy-like dowers 
—the Composite of botany—we must surely 
have leopard’s bane, with its beautiful 
masses of bloom in early spring. St. John’s- 
wort is another necessity (it is curious, by 
the way, how many of these yellow dowered 
plants are “worts” or “banes,” indicating 
the staunch belief of our forefathers in their 
medicinal properties), for there are few 
lovelier dowers than Hypericum Moseria- 
num, wide open and something like single 
yellow roses, with the greatest duff of yellow 
stamens at their centers of any dower I 
know. The plants themselves are very grace¬ 
ful, too—the branches slender and drooping 
as if the weight of their doral gold were too 
much for them. 
Of course, a large space must be filled 
with the old-time day lilies. Hemerocallis 
is the name of these, and there are enough 
varieties, blooming at different periods, to 
extend their season cpiite through May, June 
and July. Hemerocallis “Queen of May” 
is the earliest to bloom, a hybrid of very 
luxuriant habit with stems 3' to 5' high and 
as many as a dozen or twenty dowers on 
every stalk. Not only is it early, but it 
continues in bloom for two months or there¬ 
abouts and is all in all a gorgeous affair. 
The color of its dowers is very rich, the 
shade which artists call Indian yellow. 
A small variety is Hemerocallis “gold 
dust,” somewhat the same in color but with 
the backs of the dowers deepened into a 
bronze. This blooms at the same time. It 
is not as fragrant, however, as the old lemon 
lily (Hemerocallis fiava) which is usually 
about 2' high, with lemon-colored dowers 
which blossom in June and July. This is 
the lily of very old gardens, where great 
clumps of the plant have lived honorably 
i through generations. Another 
that dowers about the same time 
is Hemerocallis aurantiaca, or¬ 
ange in color, 3’ to 4' high, and 
fragrant. Last of all to bloom 
is Hemerocallis Thunbergii, with 
dowers the color of the wild 
buttercup, and stems 4' high. 
This blooms through July. 
Every one of these ought to 
be used, and in considerable 
abundance. And before them 
there may be a mass of the yel¬ 
low Iceland poppy, one of the 
most ethereal and spirited dow¬ 
ers in the whole catalog of gar¬ 
den blossoms. Even the foliage 
of this is decorative. It is of a 
lovely brilliant green, tufted so 
that it covers the ground well. 
From it the foot-high, slender 
dower stems rise, quite naked 
their entire length, bearing trem¬ 
ulously the delicate dowers, up¬ 
standing like little golden goblets. 
Other Good Species 
The native butterdy weed is 
not appreciated as it ought to be, 
though it makes a charming gar¬ 
den specimen. Its closely packed 
Umbels of small dowers are a 
brilliant orange, and come in July 
and August. They stand about 
2' to 3' high. The plant is of 
the milkweed family, and this 
family lives under a curious 
necessity for insect pollination. 
The pollen is sticky instead of 
being a dust, and coheres into a 
tiny waxy mass which is removed 
in a lump by the bee or the but¬ 
terdy that happens along at the 
psychological moment, to be 
borne as a burden either by the 
So strongly vertical in effect are the hollyhocks that they 
should be used with judgment. As accent points to break 
up the horizontal masses of other flowers they serve an 
important end 
