Summer Meetincr. - 35 



"is 



Nor is this a small insignificant ambition ; a good garden of hardy plants 

 may be a heritage left to children and grandchildren that will bless and 

 benefit them far more than a legacy of mere gold. Whatever helps a 

 life to grow upward into a purer light, a clearer atmosphere, or causes 

 the finer feelings to take root and climb up to a more healthful place, is 

 surely something worthy of notice and is an aspiration both noble and un- 

 selfish. 



Mentioning my grandmother's garden recalls to mind an article writ- 

 ten by Geneva Lane for a St. Louis paper last month. She says : "Grand- 

 mother's garden was the spot to which the sweetest memories cling. 

 It was enclosed by a hedge and lay open to the southern sky ; even the 

 beds of homely vegetables were surrounded by boxed borders of flowers, 

 and the walks were edged with rows of old-fashioned pinks, with their 

 pale green leaves and soft, feathery blossoms, whose sweetness all the 

 odors of Araby the Blest could not surpass. From the hedge leaned out 

 great red roses with loose flopping petals and flaming hollyhocks lifted 

 their stiff spikes of bloom. Such- big gorgeous butterflies came to that 

 garden, and such a saucy wren nested in a knot-hole of the grape arbor, 

 and such a bonnie bluebird built in a gourd nailed to a tree, and such 

 cheery, chattering martins accepted the little house set for them atop 

 a pole ; and they all lived in peace, for no quarrelsome feathered alien 

 had then come to spoil their Eden." 



In sentiments like these is hidden one of the strongest pleas for the 

 hardy plants, for a garden around which clings such fragrant and 

 tender memories, is something very sacred, and well worth cultivating. 



J. Horace McFarland, in the April number of the Household, de- 

 clares that'we Americans do not care enough for the beautiful plants of 

 our country, but that we continually neglect them to cultivate assiduously 

 a few foreign introductions, so, while I am making this plea for hardy 

 plants, let me include a special one for those belonging to our own 

 country, and climate. This writer tells of a wonderful old garden on the 

 Hudson, in which, he says "the quaint roses of generations ago are 

 neighbors to exquisite Peonies and Iris, and where the grass goes to seed 

 untouched by the lawn mower, and where the Honeysuckle and matri- 

 mony vine clamber at will over the portico, and where a black locust 

 with more than three centuries of bloom, is flanked by mock orange and 

 lilac bushes." He declares that this garden is always lovely, and al- 

 most cares for itself. There is no annual florist's bill to pay. 



This last item is one that appealed to me with considerable force, 

 for the florist's bill is no small matter, wheni one yields to the temptation 

 to buy the exotics which so seductively adorn every greenhouse. I have 



