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    COLOUR IN THE
    FLOWER GARDEN


[Illustration: _WHITE LILIES._]




    _THE "COUNTRY LIFE"
    LIBRARY_


                 COLOUR IN THE
                 FLOWER GARDEN


                      BY
                GERTRUDE JEKYLL


       [Illustration: A bunch of flowers.]


                 PUBLISHED BY

    "COUNTRY LIFE," LTD.   GEORGE NEWNES, LTD.
    20, TAVISTOCK STREET   7-12, SOUTHAMPTON ST.
    COVENT GARDEN, W.C.    COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

                      1908




INTRODUCTION


To plant and maintain a flower-border, _with a good scheme for colour_,
is by no means the easy thing that is commonly supposed.

I believe that the only way in which it can be made successful is to
devote certain borders to certain times of year; each border or garden
region to be bright for from one to three months.

Nothing seems to me more unsatisfactory than the border that in spring
shows a few patches of flowering bulbs in ground otherwise looking
empty, or with tufts of herbaceous plants just coming through. Then
the bulbs die down, and their place is wanted for something that comes
later. Either the ground will then show bare patches, or the place of
the bulbs will be forgotten and they will be cruelly stabbed by fork or
trowel when it is wished to put something in the apparently empty space.

For many years I have been working at these problems in my own garden,
and having come to certain conclusions, can venture to put them forth
with some confidence. I may mention that from the nature of the ground,
in its original state partly wooded and partly bare field, and from
its having been brought into cultivation and some sort of shape before
it was known where the house now upon it would exactly stand, the
garden has less general unity of design than I should have wished. The
position and general form of its various portions were accepted mainly
according to their natural conditions, so that the garden ground,
though but of small extent, falls into different regions, with a
general, but not altogether definite, cohesion.

I am strongly of opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants,
however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their
number, does not make a garden; it only makes a _collection_. Having
got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection
and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted
unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints
from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like
having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not
constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe to our
gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use the plants
that they shall form beautiful pictures; and that, while delighting
our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exalted
criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not
tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants,
but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the
best.

It is just in the way it is done that lies the whole difference between
commonplace gardening and gardening that may rightly claim to rank as a
fine art. Given the same space of ground and the same material, they
may either be fashioned into a dream of beauty, a place of perfect
rest and refreshment of mind and body--a series of soul-satisfying
pictures--a treasure of well-set jewels; or they may be so misused that
everything is jarring and displeasing. To learn how to perceive the
difference and how to do right is to apprehend gardening as a fine art.
In practice it is to place every plant or group of plants with such
thoughtful care and definite intention that they shall form a part of a
harmonious whole, and that successive portions, or in some cases even
single details, shall show a series of pictures. It is so to regulate
the trees and undergrowth of the wood that their lines and masses come
into beautiful form and harmonious proportion; it is to be always
watching,