WILD FLOWER SANCTUARIES 



stem and leaf, and the plant has retired to the 

 embrace of mother earth. 



There is little to attract in the wild flower 

 garden in midsummer; its supreme moment is 

 April, its life the breath of spring. 



I have long hoped that some master of acres 

 would devote a few of them to the cultivation 

 and development of our native Asters. These 

 form a group so beautiful and so vigorous in 

 their wild state that neither gardener nor land- 

 scape architect has ever seriously set to work 

 to improve them. Why trouble about it ? — they 

 are perfect as they are. It is a case where the 

 wealth of the fields has impoverished the gar- 

 dens. Now and then one finds an individual 

 plant growing under unusually favorable con- 

 ditions, and the result is astonishing. 



Only two, a real Aster, the New England, 

 and a near Aster, the Boltonia, appear habit- 

 ually in our gardens — and the fields are full of 

 others quite as beautiful. So far as I know, 

 there has been no effort to enlarge the stars, 

 though Boltonia appears in pink as well as its 



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