There is a small growing perennial Aster--I will not venture on its specific name, but have seen it figured in an American book of wild flowers as _divaricata_, and provisionally know it by that name. I find it, in conjunction with Megasea, one of the most useful of these filling plants for edge spaces that just want some pretty trimming but are not wide enough for anything larger. The same group was photographed two years running. The first year the bloom was a little thicker below, but the second I thought it still better when it had partly rambled up into the lower branches of the Weigela that stood behind it. The little thin starry flower is white and is borne in branching heads; the leaves are lance-shaped and sharply pointed; but when the plant is examined in the hand its most distinct character is the small fine wire-like stem, smooth and nearly black, that branches about in an angular way of its own.
These are only a very few examples of what may also be done in a number of other ways, but if they serve to draw attention to those generally neglected shrub edges, it may be to the benefit of many gardens. Where there is room for a good group of plants they should be of some size or solidity of character such as Tree Lupine, Peony, Acanthus, _Spiræa Aruncus_, the larger hardy Ferns, _Rubus nutkanus_ or plants of some such size and character. The low-growing _Bambusa tessellata_ is a capital shrub-edge plant.
[Illustration: _LILIES AND FERNS AT THE WOOD EDGE NEAR THE LAWN._]
[Illustration: _SMALL WIRE-STEMMED ASTER AT SHRUB EDGE. SECOND YEAR AFTER PLANTING._]
[Illustration: _SMALL WIRE-STEMMED ASTER AT SHRUB EDGE. THIRD YEAR AFTER PLANTING._]
[Illustration: _STOBÆA PURPUREA, A GREY GARDEN WALL PLANT FOR A SUNNY PLACE._]
It is extremely interesting to work out gardens in which some special colouring predominates, and to those who, by natural endowment or careful eye-cultivation, possess or have acquired what artists understand by an eye for colour, it opens out a whole new range of garden delights.
Arrangements of this kind are sometimes attempted, for occasionally I hear of a garden for blue plants, or a white garden, but I think such ideas are but rarely worked out with the best aims. I have in mind a whole series of gardens of restricted colouring, though I have not, alas, either room or means enough to work them out for myself, and have to be satisfied with an all-too-short length of double border for a grey scheme. But, besides my small grey garden I badly want others, and especially a gold garden, a blue garden, and a green garden; though the number of these desires might easily be multiplied.