MIDWINTER GARDENS 



wonder, their practical value to Northern home- 

 lovers is not the marvel and delight of some- 

 thing inimitable but their inspiring suggestion 

 of what may be done with ordinary Northern 

 home grounds, to the end that the floral pag- 

 eantry of the Southern January may be fully 

 rivalled by the glory of the Northern June. 



For of course the Flora of the North, who 

 in the winter of long white nights puts off all 

 her jewelry and nearly all her robes and "lies 

 down to pleasant dreams," is the blonde sister 

 of, and equal heiress with, this darker one who, 

 in undivested greenery and flowered trappings, 

 persists in open-air revelry through all the 

 months from the autumn side of Christmas to 

 the summer side of Easter. Wherefore it seems 

 to me the Northern householder's first step 

 should be to lay hold upon this New Orleans 

 idea in gardening — which is merely by adop- 

 tion a New Orleans idea, while through and 

 through, except where now and then its votaries 

 stoop to folly, it is by book a Northern voice, 

 the garden gospel of Frederick Law Olmsted. 



Wherever American homes are assembled we 

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