204 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The Magic of Flowers about the Home. 



MRS. W. C. LINDERMAN, MARENGO, ILL. 



I wonder why we cling to the old theory that to make our 

 surroundings beautiful one must be rich as Croesus, when all that 

 we need to do in God's beautiful out of doors is to just assist dame 

 nature a wee bit, and the surroundings of the most humble habi- 

 tation will blossom like the rose. This is not just a beautiful 

 theory. I have put it all into practice, and I offer my own little 



The house and grounds, "Lilac Lodge," purchased in March, 1908. 



effort as proof and will invite you to come into my garden at 

 Lilac Lodge, Marengo, Illinois. 



First, I want to show you one acre of land, a house on a hill 

 bleak and barren, not a vine to shelter its unbeautiful lines. It 

 looks like an old lady without the softening films of a veil to hide 

 her wrinkles. The only redeeming thing about the place was at 

 the back of the house, where two rows of lilac bushes over a hun- 

 dred years old stood as shield and guard. The rows were about 

 one hundred feet long and completely grown together, though 

 originally planted about forty feet apart. It was little work for 

 the good man of the house to trim down these old bushes, thus 

 making a long avenue between that in May, with purple plumes 

 falling on either side to the ground, forms a vista fit for dreams. 

 At the end of this avenue we set up four ten-foot posts, and a 

 bundle of lath made a triangle of lattice on top of the frame. We 

 painted it all white, placed a white garden seat underneath it, 

 then went to the roadside a mile away and dug up two Lombardy 

 poplars to plant in the background. We named it after Marie 

 Antoinette's "Temple of Love," in far off Versailles. 



