Though there is as yet but little bloom in this end of the border, the picture is complete and satisfying. Each one of the few flower-groups tells to the utmost, while the intervening masses of leafage are in themselves beautiful and have the effect of being relatively well disposed. There is also such rich promise of flower beauty to come that the mind is filled with glad anticipation, besides feeling content for the time being with what it has before it. There is one item of colouring that strikes the trained eye as specially delightful. It is a bushy mass of Clematis recta, now out of bloom. It occurs between the overhanging purple Clematis and the nearer groups of Cineraria maritima {Senecio cineraria} and Santolina. The leaves are much deeper in tone than these and have a leaden sort of blueness, but the colouring, both of the parts in light and even more of the mysterious shadows, is in the highest degree satisfactory and makes me long for the appreciative presence of those few friends who are artists both on canvas and in their gardens, and most of all for that of one who is now dead (The late H. B. Brabazon) but to whom I owe, with deepest thankfulness, a precious memory of forty years of helpful and sympathetic guidance and encouragement in the observation and study of colour beauty.
