YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 39, 21 March 1940, Page 41

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 26)

ARCH has slipped away so \ /| fast that we must merely touch on the effective position of white flowers, out now, and to be arranged for, as we snip and tidy in our early autumn borders. If the soil is still too wet to allow you to run the hoe between your dahlias, chrysanthemums, Michaelmas daisies, _ etc., where seedling weeds are very busy, you can be usefully at work removing dead flower and leaf stalks and snipping spent flower heads from the dahlias. Those barbarically splendid varieties as big as soup plates will have suffered most in the stormy weather, and may need a few extra — but please, unobtrusive-stakes among the clumps. More beautiful, to my mind both indoors and out, are the cactus dahlias, and unless your garden has already too big a proportion of daisies, the daisy dahlias also. Tiny pom-poms are gay and attractive, and indoors very decorative, so earn their place with dahlia growers. A sprinkling of pure white cactus dahlias, or a truss of sulphur or white daisy ones can be very effective if grown in conjunction with a deep blood-red such as Bishop of Llandaff. The tomato reds and other tawny shadés"so popular in dahlias prefer sulphur yellow as a foil, but purest white with any of the dark purpleblue dahlias or amongst second flowering blue lupins and campanulas are very useful in the autumn border. Whatever: the variety of dahlia you grow, keep the spent heads well harvested. Your reward will be a continuous blossoming till the first frost cuts down your plants. Note carefully now — you probably won’t remember later-exactly which colour effects are ‘best, so -that when you divide your lifted dahlia tubers, you may plant them in the most pleasing colour groups. Chrysanthemums Keep all chrysanthemums well fed and firmly staked. If you have disbudded heavily you may expect fewer and larger blooms. With chrysanthemums, as with the dahlias, I care less for outsize than for a goodly profusion of medium sized blooms. The single daisy chrysanthemums

require less staking than the doubles, and combine well with Michaelmas daisies, which bloom at the same time. This hardy Korean chrysanthemum stands up well to rain and frost. Where maximum effect with minimum effort is desired it should be warmly welcomed. Amongst chrysanthemums a clump of feathery white blooms will enhance the value of the more brilliantly coloured varieties. Borders Now is the time to fill those vacant spaces in your border with Canterbury bells, obtainable in very handsome double and single varieties in pink, white, mauve and blue. Place the white close beside the deepest blues. What the diamond is to emeralds, sapphires, and pigeon-blood rubies, so in our ower kingdom are white flowers. Of great value in themselves, they also illuminate the blues, reds, and sombre greens, giving that arresting "aliveness" which only well planned landscapes and Nature herself attain. Hence the value, in our sombre evergreen native bush, of white and pale yellow flowers. Plant out during this month those hardy border carnations which you have layered yourself, or are planning to buy, together with pentstemons, sweet williams, and Brompton stocks. Just here and there make room for gypsophila, Bristol fairy is a particularly charming variety for the border, adding grace and beauty to the heavy colour compe of peonies, etc. As you hurry off to gather tomatoes, well dried onions, marrows and pumpkins, to harvest fallen and ripening fruits, and cut out old fruiting canes from the raspberry patch, don’t forget to plan a place for your autumn sowing of sweet peas. They should be comfortably tucked into deep, rich beds quite soon now, Winter Vegetables Also you'll be sowing prickly spinach and lettuce to stand through the winter. Don’t force these last with fertiliser. But if you have wood-ash, work a good supply into your lettuce seed-bed. It toughens the fibre of the young plants and helps them to stand up to the winter ahead.