72 The American Flower Garden 



poet s narcissus and yellow trumpeted daffodils among the grass; 

 and he figures that a thousand of these bulbs can be bought for the 

 price of a box of cigars. He will spangle his lawn with cheerful yel 

 low crocuses that, unlike the daffodils here, really &quot;come before the 

 swallow dares/ He delays the first cutting of the grass awhile to 

 allow the bulbs to ripen their grass-like leaves. Porcelain blue scillas 

 will be happily colonised too. He uses trees and shrubs to mark 

 with unoffending outline the boundaries of his grounds and 

 secures privacy with them rather than with fences or walls. 

 Nature s open stretches of meadow land will have their counterpart 

 in the unbroken stretches of his lawn whose borders only may 

 be softened by the sweeping branches of a fringe of shrubbery or a 

 sinuous border of hardy flowers. He would be as loth to put a 

 bed of geraniums in the centre of a tree-girt lawn picture as he 

 would to rouge his baby s cheeks. Weeping and freakish trees 

 distress him as does shrubbery with variegated foliage suggesting 

 a calico pony. If he be the joyful possessor of a bit of woodland, 

 he will surely copy nature s method of planting flowering dogwoods 

 and shad bushes along the undulating border with an occasional 

 Judas tree, perhaps, if its vivid bluish pink blossoms do not offend 

 his eye for colour; but by no possibility could a landscape gardener 

 worthy the name, plant copper beeches or Japanese maples along 

 a copse. A sense of fitness must be conveyed or trees and plants, 

 however beautiful in themselves, may give positive offence in alien 

 environments. The student of nature s effects will soon cover 

 any unsightly old fences, not as nature does too often, with poison 

 ivy, but with a fragrant tangle of sweet briar and clematis. He 

 will see that a raw, newly cut bank is planted with honeysuckle 

 or with the trailing Wichuraiana roses, whose shining dark, waxy 

 leaves and myriads of delicate white or pink flowers in July will 



