32 .S7(7/r Horiiciiitiiral Society. 



gardens. The garden must be yours, if it is another's, it is not worth while 

 to you. A good garden is the one that gives the most pleasure to the 

 owner. He may grow orchids or thistles. The measure of success in a 

 garden is the sensitive mind, not the plants. A garden is for the afifec- 

 tions." 



Many persons have I known who cultivated gardens because they 

 loved them. In Sedalia there is a practicing physician, a refined, court- 

 eous gentleman, who is a rose specialist. I often drive past his home 

 to look at the roses. They are not hidden behind an unsightly fence, 

 nor concealed in any way ; they flaunt their beauty right out in the front 

 yard, for every passerby to enjoy. Personally, I dislike selfish gardens; 

 they always seem to- belong either to foolish or selfish people. 



Its permanence is a strong plea for the hardy plant. In thinking 

 of England, I often wish I might wander in one of those old gardens, 

 the magnificent heritage of that land ; gardens which can boast of a 

 continuous existence and history, reaching back to the Tudor period. 

 Who that 'really cares for gardens, would not wish to see those in Eng- 

 land ? 



In some of the eastern states are gardens of hardy plants, over a 

 •century old, whose histories would be very interesting could they be 

 given. 



In our own state are a few gardens with pleasing, if brief, histories. 

 A friend wrote me in February, from near St. Louis, of a garden which 

 I have ever since washed to see. "There is," she says; "a spot near here 

 that I would like to have you visit. It is where I had my flower garden 

 in girlhood. Great clumps of lilac bushes and clusters of maiden blush 

 roses, set out b}- my mother, who has been dead thirty-four years, flourish 

 and blossom there. The year before she died, she brought a few sprigs 

 of trailing myrtle and planted them in a flower bed. They have spread 

 over the whole garden site, and it is now carpeted with the pretty ever- 

 green vines. Today in the midst of a snow storm, I went over to the 

 myrtle grove and gathered a big bunch of myrtle blossoms and white 

 violets. The house in which we lived has fallen down and been carted 

 away, and that old garden in the middle of a field makes sensible people 

 often remark, 'Why don't you cut down those trees and grub up those 

 bushes? Aren't they in the way when you cultivate? Of course they are, 

 but — ^well, the more sense people have, the less they understand. It is 

 only sentimental people who understand such things as that solitary 

 old garden in the field." 



That last remark contains the gist of the whole matter. Those who 

 care for flowers must be classed with the sentimental people, and I re- 

 joice that this company is rapidly increasing in numbers. 



