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How to Make a Flower Garden 



strive to construct out of them a lot of formal beds, designed after the latest 

 oilcloth, and in which the subtle and delicate beauty of the parts is lost in 

 the commonness of the whole ! 



It is much the same as if the masterpieces in the Uffizi were grouped 

 together so as to reproduce the mosaics in its pavement, and all the sweetness 



of Fra Angelico, the grace of 

 Raphael, and the power of 

 Buonarroti were sacrificed to the 

 mediocrity of a Greek border. 

 If one can imagine how Ruskin 

 would have felt over such an 

 arrangement of the masters, one 

 can understand how it is that all 

 lovers of the wild garden the world 

 over go back to nature for their 

 inspiration, and echo j\Ir. Robin- 

 son's prayer for deliverance from 

 the "death note of the pastry 

 cook's garden." But to our 

 subject. 



The country home faces upon 

 a street in a little rural community 

 not so far from New York but that the proprietor of the wild garden, who 

 works for a living during such intervals as his royal pastime allows, has no 

 trouble in passing daily back and forth. From the side and rear the house 

 looked out upon a piece of waste ground which, until my no\'itiate began, had 

 been abandoned to the sumac and the bramble. This was separated from the 

 cultivated garden and the road by a terrace four feet high, surmounted 

 along its entire length by a trelHs covered with sweet peas. Behind this 

 trellis and the bank the seclusion was complete. It was here that I started 

 the wild garden, working entirely screened from the road, while my two 

 young but enthusiastic assistants sat in the shade and offered advice upon 

 the various problems of floriculture as they presented themselves. 



I commenced by uprooting the briers and the sumac bushes, being 

 careful to preserve such natural features as the place possessed. A couple 

 of boulders were rolled into picturesque positions, and clusters of bushes 

 were left standing here and there. In one corner near the house a clump 



Adder's tongue, or dog's-tooth violet 



