OSWEGO TEA IN THE GARDEN 



By x\della Prescott. 



A MONG the wild flowers that may be easily grown in gar- 

 dens, perhaps none is more attractive than the Oswego 

 Tea {Monurda didyma) , a showy-member of the mint family that 

 brightens our swamps and brooksides during the late summer 

 with its graceful heads of bright, yet soft red flowers. It is 

 beloved of landscape architects who are obsessed with a desire 

 for solid blocks of color, because there are few flowers of that 

 particular shade. But it loses all its poetic grace when too 

 broadly massed and is much more effective scattered among 

 shrubbery in a natural way, being massed very lightly if at all. 

 It delights in rich, moist soil and partial shade but will grow 

 after a fashion almost anywhere, though it is naturally much 

 shorter when growing in dry soil, sometimes being scarcely a 

 foot tall, while in low, damp woodlands it may reach quite 

 three times that height. 



But its greatest charm (for the writer at least) is its at- 

 traction for humming birds, who seem to find the nectar in the 

 long tubes flavored quite to their taste and come many times a 

 day to lunch on the dainty food. If the flowers are near a 

 porch or frequented garden seat, the tiny birds will become so 

 tame that they will alight on a twig" to rest between sips with 

 no appearance of fear. The cardinal flower is also a favorite 

 with humming birds and may be planted effectively in front of 

 the mint, thus giving variety that even to birds is the spice of 

 life. Both of these plants may be raised from seed, but as the 

 cardinal flowers insist on moisture yet "damps off" very read- 

 ily, the problem of keeping it wet and dry at the same time is 

 sometimes a perplexing one and not easily solved. 



