286 How to Make a Flower Garden 



the mild amazement of the cows by wheeHng up through the pastures 

 where they grazed barrow-loads of unfolding fiddleheads. Among the ferns 

 were planted the trillium, the pyrola, and a few stalks of the graceful, if evil- 

 scented, cohosh. Out in the open lot, and just close enough to the maple 

 for its swaying branches to give alternate sun and shade, I established a fine 

 colony of wild bergamot. The flowers were found in a distant field, where 

 they grew m great irregular masses, like a lake of lavender in a sea of green. 

 With great labour I brought a quantity of the roots home. All about them 

 I spread a broad, thick mat of creeping thyme. The next year, when both 

 came up m their beauty, the picture was well worth seeing. Verily, no 

 Oriental monarch sits upon carpet more magnificent ; nor can the looms of 

 Wilton nor of Brussels nor of far Bagdad produce its equal ! At all times 

 an exquisite green, there comes a day when myriads of unsuspected buds 

 blossom into simultaneous beauty, and presto ! the " bank whereon the wild 

 thyme blows " rivals in its carpeting the tapestries of Ormus and of Ind. 



Beside one of the boulders a populous little community of the Venus's 

 looking-glass was planted. To my mind there is something peculiarly 

 attractive about this little plant — an out-of-the-w^ay something that baffles 

 definition. With its slender, tapering spires, curiously turned and clasped 

 at regular intervals by circular, shell-like leaves, each with its star-fiow^er 

 seated on the stem, it is enough different from everything else to suggest 

 no analogue near at hand. I have studied them often, unable to satisfy 

 myself whether they resembled more a forest of diminutive totem poles 

 or a village of liliputian pagodas. 



Out in the blazing sun the gorgeous butterfly-weed spread its orange 

 blossoms above the grass, an attractive flower, and so plentiful that one 

 would think none easier to procure. But let me warn any enthusiastic 

 proselyte, with all the earnestness that the memory of aching back and 

 blistered hands can give, that it is easier to draw up leviathan with a hook 

 than to raise the obstinate asclepias from the depths to which its fleshy 

 roots go down. 



A fallen tree or an old stump is an invaluable possession for a wild garden. 

 No matter how bare or unsightly at first, the Virginia creeper or the Virgin's 

 bower w^ll clothe it in a year or two in draperies that nothing can surpass. 

 Just under one edge of my grapevine I placed a curious stump that I found 

 in one of my rambles near a neighbouring lake. I astounded a native by 

 paying him twice his charge for carting it home. Had he known my delight 



