YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 29, 12 January 1940, Page 41

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 17)

"Give this house, oh traveller, pray A blessing, as you pass this way And if you've time, I beg your pardon, While ‘you're at it, bless the garden." T this time of year, many of you may be at holiday baches in the country or revelling in the warm sand of your seaside cottage. With very little effort these temporary homes can have gay gardens for the summer season, For the holiday or week-end. garden there is a wide choice in yellow, orange, and flame flowers with several good blues to carry out a pleasing colour plan. Nasturtiums, climbing and dwarf, and "bunnies" (or, more formally, antirrhinums) have excellent colours from lemon to flame and are both good doers on poor soil, Californian poppy (Escholtzia) when once establishedeven almost among shingle-gives a great blaze of colour and seeds itself liberally over many years. Sow, too, seeds of Aaron’s Rod-the verbascum known to old English country folk as Moth Mullein-and though the seed fall on stony ground it will flourish nobly. Red-hot-pokers-also less dramatically called Torch Lilies-and the improved mombretia, are still in the colour scheme, verging to flame, and both do well even with arid conditions. For tall subjects, Annual SunflowersHelianthus -or the hardy perennial Helenium, so admirable for cutting, together with Golden Rod, make excellent foils for blue Larkspurs. Grow these in preference to the more exacting delphiniums. Blue lupins and the semi-tree lemon ones keep the colour scheme going. A scatter of calendula, the old friend " marigold," in all sorts of tawny shades, sown over the poorest soil beneath tall growers, provides endless blooms for vase or garden. Actually marigolds are biennial, but once established, they keep on indefinitely. Forget-me-nots in the modern ‘deep blues can grace a cooler corner, and wild Viper’s bugloss is as attractive as it is hardyand as blue as the ‘heavens. Furryleaved Cape Forget-me-nots-hboth the tall" and the shorter variety-are the very loveliest of hardy blues for dry soils. f . r Candy tuft in all pastel shades makes a Victorian posy of your patch. Nemesia, too, has delightful shades for the pink, mauve, or pale-blue garden scheme. Only keep the flowers cut and nemesia will be happy anywhere. For my part, in a week-end garden I would sow petunias, everywhere in every shade-midnight-blue, mottled, or Rosy Morn, deeply gayly pink. Resistant-to drought, petunias ask but leave to sprawl and sunbathe for many weeks. All the phlox are worthy of inclusion in the look-after-yourself garden. The Drummondii are excellent, although annual, and have a wide colour range.

Just say "Off with your head" free quently, and the phlox will keep blooming for its life. Shirley poppies will take happy possession of odd corners and a few seeds of Linaria-‘ Toad Flax" -come cheerfully up even on the sides of your gravel path. Hollyhocks are right for low cottages, but select singleflowered ones. They are less likely than the double variety to rust or drop their flower buds. Seaside gardens that boast a rocky approach ask for mesembryanthemums in glorious curtains of crimson, gold and mauve. A clump or two of sea pinks and a touch of sea lavender will be all else required. Few people attempt to grow vegetables at holiday camps by river or sea. However, chives, parsley, mustard, cress, and radishes are possible and useful. Given a longer time to mature, with moisture and decent soil, spinach and lettuce are also useful.