10 OCTOBER 1941, Page 14

In the Garden It is not easy to recall a

year when there were better October gardens. Michaelmas daisies, from the stiff dwarfs to the cool mist7 giants, have been splendid. They depend very much on light for effect. Sunlight filters through theni, giving an effect of foam, aad in the evenings, when the sun has gone, the blue of deeper shades becomes intensified. Similarly a late phlox is bright pink by dal but quite blue in the evenings, out of the sun. There has been 2 very good late shrub, Cleordendron foetidum, with grey straiell branches like those of an ash-plant, huge dark leaves and frothing wine-pink heads of flower. Like hardy fuchsias it gets cut had in winter, but always flowers and is always rich and charming 001 late October. It seems to increase by suckers, which can be pulled up and rammed in hard after flowering. It is six feet tall and needs elbow-room, but it is too good and too late to miss. As it flowers, always the latest of shrubs, the earliest and the best of winter shrubs shows its first touch of bloom—the first pearl-pink of Viburnum fragrans, which will be a consistent joy and comfort until Moll Both are from China.

H. E. BATES.