THE GARDENERS' MONTHLY 



[August, 



in that old New England town, the old houses, 

 and orchards, and gardens, the same year after 

 year, and we were not yet prepared for innovations. 



And the wild flowers ! To use Mrs. Ws words : 

 " Ere the snow was fully melted I went in quest of 

 them." For on those dear old hills Winter comes 

 early and lingers long. And O, how I used to 

 long for the coming of spring with her bright 

 train ! 



The Hepaticas came first, then the blue Violets 

 and the spring beauties, the Trilliums and the 

 Adder Tongues (Erythronium), and many more^ 

 close at home. In a neighbor's woods there were 

 Blood-root and Columbine ; in another grew the 

 beautiful little Chiclcweed Wintergreen (Trienta- 

 lis), and still farther away, towards the river, un- 

 der the Pines, the lovely Traihng Arbutus. And 

 the Wood Violets ! I see them yet, fair and 

 stately, and pure, though more than thirty years 

 have passed since my eyes beheld them. A rela- 

 tive (another exile), to whom I wrote of them, 

 says, "When I think of those Wood Violets as 

 they grew in our Maple grove, they seem like 

 beautiful, intelligent spirits standing there." What 

 would I not give to have them here ! Not even 

 those Roses could be more dear. 



And this brings me to a theme near my heart — 

 the culture of wild flowers. In the first flower-bed 

 I made in that old home garden I gathered my 

 wild-wood favorites. The Violet and Hepatica, 

 the Blood-root and Columbine grew side by side 

 with the few common garden flowers, which were 

 all I knew of then. Since then, in all my wan- 

 derings, I have carried out my childhood's plan. 

 In my Iowa home were gathered treasures from 

 many States ; mementoes from many floral friends. 

 In my brief sojourn in California I gathered bulbs 

 of her beautiful flowers, and they smile on me 

 now as I write. Bulbs gathered in winter from 

 the plowed fields of Oregon grow beside them, and 

 in another bed are lineal descendants of the Iowa 

 flowers I sent long years ago to a friend in Michi- 

 gan. What could be better keepsakes or 

 memorials ? Have not they, who keep through 

 all their years the love of flowers, found one 

 fountain of perpetual youth ? 



One item more. A newly arrived immigrant 

 came here on some business a day or two since. 

 A plain man of fifty, a native of bleak Finland, 

 but now just from Liverpool, which had been his 

 home for fourteen years, rather oppressed by the 

 strangeness of everything, and full of care about 

 getting settled in his new home. While waiting, 

 he walked down into my little flower-garden, and 



came back with a shining face. " It vas so 

 pretty," he said ; " 1 vas in de pig gardens in 

 Liverpool ; dey vas pigger, but dey vas no 

 prettier, I tink I like my missus to see it. She 

 tink she like flower-garden some time." Of 

 course I invited him cordially to bring her, and 

 when she is ready for that garden she shall have 

 bountiful contributions. There is a free-masonry 

 among flower-lovers, and that word, "flower- 

 lover," is the magic password. 



La Centre, Washington Territory. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



The White Fringe Tree. — It takes a long 

 time for plants to be thoroughly well known, and 

 this we now illustrate is a striking example. It 

 has been in cultivation for a century, but chiefly 

 in the gardens of the curious, and it is only of 

 late years since it has been " handled," as the 

 trade term goes, by the much abused tree agent, 

 that the great merits it possesses as a highly orna- 

 mental shrub of strong growth are appreciated. It 

 flowers early in June, and a tree covered with its 



large clusters of pendent white flowers, cut as if 

 by a scissors to a mass of fringe, is a sight once 

 seen never forgotten, for there is none other 

 that has such a marked peculiarity as this. 



In August and September some of the trees are 

 followed by fruit of an oblong shape, bluish pur- 

 ple, resembling grapes, and are truly ornamental. 

 The tree belongs to the same natural family as 

 the Ash, Oleacese, and it is the peculiarity of this 



