of Rural Art and Taste. 



143 



that liad fallen over night ; and talking about 

 golden beauties, brings to mind the old beds of 



Mfu-i/f/oldn — These are out of fashion 

 now, suggests some modern florist ; well, they 

 may be, but the flowers are just as showy as 

 ever they were, and I don't believe any of the 

 novelties, with great long latin names, are 

 any more valuable for the modern style of 

 gardening. A circle cut in the smoothly 

 shaven turf, and filled with the Double Yellow 

 or Orange Marygold, and edged with an outer 

 ring of the dwarf French striped variety, is 

 difficult to excel. If the bed should be raised 

 in the center, it will look better. It will 

 bloom all summer long, and won't cost $b or 

 $10 to fill, either. Now, whilst I am talking 

 about 



Old-fa shiitned Flotvers, let me speak a 

 good word for a few of the old time favorites 

 that my grandmother delighted in, and which 

 are being hunted up — why ? Because they 

 are better than scores of the newer kinds that 

 have usurped their places. Every one who 

 owns a group or belt of shrubbery (and I sin- ! 

 cerely pity the man who don't), should, in j 

 early spring, dig a few lioles here and there i 

 through it, fill them with generous compost, j 

 and insert one or more Sunflowers, Castor Oil ! 

 Beans, Tobacco plants, Hollyhocks, etc., 

 wherever they will look the most appropriate. 

 It is wonderful what a change these will effect 

 in the mass ; indeed, they seem to give a 

 tropical aspect to its otherwise tame character. 

 Still, on the ancient order of plants, I ask 

 what is the reason that as soon as a citizen 

 concludes that he has sufficient means to buy 

 a home in the country, that the first plants he 

 wants to set out, are 



Old-fashioned Shi ubs?— Yes, he is 

 scarcely inside the nursery office before he 

 asks if he can procure a Lilac, Snowball, 

 Sweet-scented Shrub, Mock Orange, Corcho- 

 rus, and a Honeysuckle, ; and I honor him 

 for it too, for beautiful as many of the newer 

 candidates for popular favor are, I say none of 

 them excel, in fragrance, the Lilac and Mock 

 Orange or Syringa. 



As a background to a group of low-growing 

 shrubs, or as a mass to conceal some unsightly 



object, nothing can possibly surpass the list 

 that I have enumerated. 



As I stroll down the garden walk, my 

 goodly row of 



Currants catch my eye, all of the real 

 old-fashioned variety, too — the Red Dutch ; 

 and I remember how a few yeai-s since I 

 planted another row close beside it, composed 

 of one plant of every kind I could obtain 

 either in Europe or this country as well. Now 

 where are they ? the labels are rotted off", and 

 the names are illegible ; but I do not care, for 

 one by one I eagerly watched for superiority, 

 and one by one they disappointed me, and so 

 they disappeared over the fence. 



Some of them were larger than the old 

 "stand-by," and some were perhaps a little 

 less tart, but the weight of fruit was always 

 in favor of the latter, and therefore I want no 

 other. I don't like 



Gooseberries, they are insipid, tasteless 

 fruits, at best, and as for tarts in a green 

 state, they are tart enough themselves, to not 

 disgrace their names. I am too poor to pur- 

 chase enough sugar to make them toothsome, 

 and even could I afford such an act of extrav- 

 agance, it would not pay, for they would be 

 nothing but Gooseberries after all. I grow a 

 few bushes of the same kind that my grand- 

 father did before me, and I am satisfied that 

 I have the best ; although some people call 

 them the Cluster, and others the American 

 Seedling, they are nothing but the old-fash- 

 ioned kind, and I must have them, because — 

 well, because folks must have Gooseberries, 

 you know. And in fondly lingering over all 

 the requisites to form a popular garden in the 

 " far away times," memory recalls the two 

 flower beds that edged the one straight walk 

 down the center of. the enclosure. The most 

 of the ornamental plants that used to grace 

 these borders, have now very nearly passed 

 away, but they have yet a place in the memo- 

 ries of some true lovers of the good old days, 

 when one begged a slip of this, and a root of 

 the other plant, and never knew what a floral 

 establishment was intended for. 



Prominently among these. 



Old liorder I'lants was the gorgeous 



