Yuccas, both of the large and small kinds, are also used in the Blue garden, and white Lilies, _candidum_ and _longiflorum_. There is foliage both of glaucous and of bright green colour, besides an occasional patch of the silvery _Eryngium giganteum_. At the front edge are the two best Funkias, _F. grandiflora_, with leaves of bright yellow-green, and _F. Sieboldi_, whose leaves are glaucous. The variegated Coltsfoot is a valuable edge-plant where the yellowish white of its bold parti-colouring is in place, and I find good use for the variegated form of the handsome Grass _Glyceria_ or _Poa aquatica_. Though this is a plant whose proper place is in wet ground, it will accommodate itself to the flower border, but it is well to keep it on the side away from the sun. It harmonises well in colour with the Coltsfoot; as a garden plant it is of the same class as the old Ribbon Grass, but is very much better. The great white-striped Japanese grass, _Eulalia japonica striata_ (EU on the plan), is planted behind the Delphiniums at the angles, and groups well with the Maize just in front.
From the Blue garden, passing eastward, we come to the Green garden. Shrubs of bright and deep green colouring and polished leaf-surface predominate. Here are green Aucubas and Skimmias, with _Ruscus racemosus_, the beautiful Alexandrian or Victory Laurel, and more polished foliage of _Acanthus_, _Funkia_, _Asarum_, _Lilium candidum_ and _longiflorum_, and _Iris fœtidissima_. Then feathery masses of paler green, Male Fern and Lady Fern and _Myrrhis odorata_, the handsome fern-like Sweet Cicely of old English gardens. In the angles are again Eulalias, but these are the variety _zebrina_ with the leaves barred across with yellow.
In the Green garden the flowers are fewer and nearly all white--Campanulas _latifolia_ and _persicifolia_, Lilies, Tulips, Foxgloves, Snapdragons, Peonies, Hellebores--giving just a little bloom for each season to accompany the general scheme of polished and fern-like foliage. A little bloom of palest yellow shows in the front in May and June, with the flowers of Uvularia and Epimedium. But the Green garden, for proper development, should be on a much larger scale.
When one sees climbing plants or any of the shrubs that are so often used as climbers, planted in the usual way on a house or wall, about four feet apart and with no attempt at arrangement, it gives one that feeling of regret for opportunities lost or misused that is the sentiment most often aroused in the mind of the garden critic in the great number of pleasure-grounds that are planted without thought or discernment. Not infrequently in passing along a country road, with eye alert to note the beauties that are so often presented by little wayside cottage gardens, something is seen that may well serve as a lesson in better planting. The lesson is generally one that teaches greater simplicity--the doing of one thing at a time; the avoidance of overmuch detail. One such cottage has under the parlour window an old bush of _Pyrus japonica_. It had been kept well spurred back and must have been a mass of gorgeous bloom in early spring. The rest of the cottage was embowered in an old Grape Vine, perhaps of all wall plants the most beautiful, and, I always think, the most harmonious with cottages or small houses of the cottage class. It would seem to be least in place on the walls of houses of classical type, though such houses are often unsuitable for any wall plants. Still there are occasions where the noble polished foliage of Magnolia comes admirably on their larger spaces, and the clear-cut refinement of Myrtle on their lesser areas of wall-surface.