WOMEN IN THE HOME

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22243, 6 November 1937, Page 3

WOMEN IN THE HOME

THE BEAUTY OF A GARDEN COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS The love of flowers and intimate association with them soon leads to a deeper appreciation of beauty, which can only reflect happily on home life. The professional house decorator draws inspiration largely from flowers, and this finds expression in the design and choice of colouring for cretonnes, carpets, hangings, and china. Primrose and daffodil yellow, corn-flower-blue. delphinium blue, rose pink, cyclamen, leaf green, are only a few of the familiar names which enter so frequently into their schemes. At best these arc reproductions, while the colours of flowers are living, and it is in the garden .itself that we come into closest touch with the original and wonderful effects.

Light and Colour There may be the enjoyment of the colouring of individual flowers, or the satisfying picture created when sufficient numbers of one kind are seen together. By using one type of plant in conjunction with others of contrasting or harmonising colour of flower or foliage, their own beauty may sometimes be enhanced, or together they acquire a new and unex-

pccted loveliness. Because of the gradation of shades, attempts at onecolour borders, composed of different plants, are seldom successful or hardly desirable. Pleasing colour associations are much more frequently obtained by placing together plants whose form and colouring provide a telling tonepicture.

The more one is amongst flowers, the more conscious one becomes of the purity and the clarity of colour which exists among them. While there are comparatively few which may be termed self-coloured, since most have some mark to guide the bee, several come to mind. We have the paper whiteness of perennial candytuft, the clear yellow of alyssum saxatile or gold dust, the vivid orange of Siberian wallflower, and the perfect blue of anchusa. The latter and others of the borage tribe, undergo a fascinating colour-change after opening, which is comparable to the reaction of pink litmus paper to- alkali. The buds and new flowers are purple pink, but within a few hours of exposure to the sun they are sky blue.

Blue Flowers Colour, of course, is closely related to light, and this is particulax-ly noticeable with blue flowers, and probably accounts for the misty effects which some blue flowers give in certain situations or even at certain hours of the day. It is noticed also that some blue flowers seem to lose their vitality

when brought indoors, where the colour may seem lifeless, especially if used alone. “Blue,” Mary Webb says, “is the rarest colour, least often imprisoned in material things.” For the flower-lover, there are too few blue flowers, and most are shades of it, either deepened with purple or diminished with pink. Some of the most beautiful delphiniums appear to have a wash of pink thrown over the essential blue. The misty blue which seems to sweep the ground where bluebells sway, has a subtle quality shared in a lesser degree by that of forget-me-nots. Alan Mulgan In “Home” has written some beautiful words in describing the bluebell woods of England. “Blue is the most mysterious, the purest, the most spiritual of colours, and granted to these wild flowers, it gives to the spring wood its final and unapproachable loveliness.” They must be in sufficient numbers, and in the shade beneath trees to give this effect. A delightful misty, cloudy illusion is also given when the biennial, cynoglossora amabile, the Chinese Hound’s Tongue, is in bloom in the garden. This plant has a rigid erect stem rising from a grey-leaved rosette, and is clothed with hosts oi small forget-me-not blue flowers. When massed together these are very charming, and are most useful as a foil to other border plants. There is a touch of most beautiful blue, sometimes almost a midnight blue, sometimes ultramarine, in the heart of some tulip flowers. In the evening, the colour of certain of the annual blue larkspurs seems to draw the mystery of the coming night into itself

The depth of the heavenly blue, of grape hyacinths is intensified when the bulbs are planted in drifts. They are rather formal flowers, and need to be grown in numbers, looking particularly well when used to carpet the

ground beneath pink or white ornamental cherry trees. Bluq flowers always look well when associated with pink. One of the daintiest memories ot this spring has been of an orchard sown down in lawn, with forget-me-nots and pink button daisies in small beds encircling the base of each tree.

Massed Effects The dull metallic blue of ajuga replans or bugle, is very impressive when this plant is allowed to spread itself (it needs no persuasion) in some unwanted spot, or in a large pocket in the rock garden where it can be kept under control. The dark bronze foliage forms rosettes, and the plant grows by runners like a strawberry. In late spring, short, stumpy spikes arise, smothered with minute blue flowers.

Under certain conditions of soil, the blue colour of some hydrangeas is superb, so clear, so definitely blue. These showy, sterile bracts completely hide the tiny fertile flowers underneath. and of these latter few people are aware. In a white variety, such as Avalanche, these real flowers are delicate, yet perfect in form and of an exquisite blue. . Small flowers are often most decorative. Think of London Pride, of which no less an authority than Gertrude Jekyll has written so tenderly, “When its soft pink cloud is out, I always think it the loveliest sight in the garden.” It billows and foams; the thin, wiry, brown stems bear numbers of tiny flowers, lightly marked with pink. The colour is in the essential organs of the flowers and in tiny pink dots, rather than in the substance of the petals. Alone, and of its kind, it is without peer; associated with other flowers, it lends them of its grace. Similar effects are given by its aristocratic relations in the saxifraga family, but they are plants for the connoisseur. | Among the more solid colours, the rich warm glow of the calendulas never fails. Of all the improved varieties, with quilled petals and fuller flowers, few have the same living quality which is in the deep orange semi-singles with the dark brown centre, warm in colour and appealing as the eyes of a dog. There is a bronze shrubby calceolaria, which, when planted in close proximity to these glowing calendulas, and under the influence of full sunshine, makes a striking colour association. There are endless such associations —they may be called motifs, for they are in no sense of the word colourschemes—which give the atmosphei'e of loving interest to the surroundings of even the smallest home, and endow it with the indefinable stamp of refined taste and culture.

ANNIVERSARY PARTY

MR AND MRS F. J. CARR

Members of the family of Mr and Mrs F. J. Carr. Matson’s road, Papanui, entertained their parents on the occasion of their golden wedding. A short service, conducted by the Rev. F. B. Lawrence, took place in the Papanui Methodist Church, after which a wedding breakfast was held in the schoolroom. Many friends, who were present at the ceremony 50 years ago, again met to wish Mr and Mrs Carr many years of health and happiness. Congratulatory messages were received during the day from all parts of New Zealand, also from New York. Miss Ira Baynes made a presentation to Mr and Mrs Cai-r on behalf of the 11 grandchildren, all of whom were present at the gathering.

CARD PARTY AT HALSWELL •

A card party was held by the Halswell branch of the Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union in the local hall.

Card competitions were won by Mrs H. Kolkman and Mrs R. Gardiner. Mr H. Hayes and Mr H. Sunbeam, and consolation prizes were awarded to Mrs McNamara and Mrs Dick.