IV 



OLD-TIME FLOWERS 



THE capricious vagaries of taste and fashion or 

 perhaps I should say, of fashionable taste have 

 not spared the garden nor the flowers that grow in it, 

 although change here, to be sure, by reason of the very 

 nature of the material with which the work is done, 

 has not been as rapid as in many other things. Suc- 

 cessively different flowers have ruled, however, and 

 given way in time to newer favorites, even as far back 

 as garden records take us. And the flower form fol- 

 lows, in so far as it may, the form of the garden ; that 

 is, the form of the reigning favorite conforms to the 

 taste in garden design. 



For example, the tulip, which was at the height of 

 its garden popularity from the middle of the sixteenth 

 century to about the end of the seventeenth, in Eng- 

 land as well as on the Continent, enjoyed supremacy 

 during the time of greatest garden stiffness and for- 

 mality; and the tulip is a flower of imperious bearing, 



holding itself as straight as an arrow and with un- 



200 



