7 JULY 1950, Page 22

In the Garden

A great gardener in his new but rich nursery spoke with zeal of the value of grey foliage ; and as he walked round plucked a spray or two of statice and various artemisias and carnations and what not, finally completing a bouquet of grey leaves and red flowers which, he argued, consented most agreeably to a mutual relation. The little bouquet was indeed singularly pleasing in hue. It is this companionship of grey and red which lends attraction to the stiffness and -rather crude magenta of the garden corn-cockle that botanists used to call agrostemma ; and makes lamb's lug or hare's tear or statice lanata, if you like, a most valuable plant in a herbaceous border. I see that one enterprising Surrey village proposes, under the auspices of My Garden, to devote a whole marquee to flower decoration, always popular at village shows.

W. BFACH THOMAS.