46 Old Time Gardens 



often towering above our heads and forming great 

 candelabra bearing two score or more blooms. It is 

 no easy task to secure their deep-rooted rhizomes in 

 the meadow. I know a young man who won his 

 sweetheart by the patience and assiduity with which 

 he dug for her all one broiling morning to secure 

 for her the coveted Lily roots, and collapsed with 

 mild sunstroke at the finish. Her gratitude and 

 remorse were equal factors in his favor. 



The Tiger Lily is usually thought upon as a truly 

 old-fashioned flower, a veritable antique; it is a 

 favorite of artists to place as an accessory in their 

 colonial gardens, and of authors for their flower- 

 beds of Revolutionary days, but it was not known 

 either in formal garden or front yard, until after 

 "the days when we lived under the King." The 

 bulbs were first brought to England from Eastern 

 Asia in 1804 by Captain Kirkpatrick of the East 

 India Company's Service, and shared with the Japan 

 Lily the honor of being the first Eastern Lilies in- 

 troduced into European gardens. A few years ago 

 an old gentleman, Mr. Isaac Pitman, who was then 

 about eighty-five years of age, told me that he re- 

 called distinctly when Tiger Lilies first appeared in 

 our gardens, and where he first saw them growing 

 in Boston. So instead of being an old-time flower, 

 or even an old-comer from the Orient, it is one of 

 the novelties of this century. How readily has it 

 made itself at home, and even wandered wild down 

 our roadsides ! 



The two simple colors of Phlox of the old-time 

 front yard, white and crimson-purple, are now aug- 



