In the Garden
The garden of a pleasant country house has one border fringed with a plant that has enjoyed a generous measure of " unearned increment." At one moment on one single head were gathered exactly a dozen peacock butterflies and one bumble bee which was often concealed by the butter- flies' wings. If any gardener or entomologist were asked what the plant was he would hesitate between two answers only, and the lateness of the date would probably induce him to give the right answer even without the hint that an edging plant was in question. Sedum spectabile it was. There are some who will not have the flower in their garden because they dislike a blue pink, which is indeed the least popular of colours. It has been severely condemned even in that once popular climbing rose, Dorothy Perkins. The excluders miss one of the delights of a garden in autumn. No surer lure exists both for the butterflies and moths; and the year is a peacock year. I referred the other day to the unusual number seen in Surrey some weeks ago. This dozen was seen last week in a Hertfordshire garden, where the tortoiseshell also is in fair numbers, but no admirals at all are to be found. Two of those powerful fliers, the monarch or milkweed butterfly, which are alleged to fly the Atlantic, have, I believe, appeared on our coast. A very beautiful and hardy shrub worth planting by way of a lure as well as for itself is the blue flowered ceratostigma. It is irresistible to some butterflies and draws them from afar.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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