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How to Make a Flower Garden 



their native wilds. Indeed, nothing could be more lifelike than the low 

 purple and the white spikes of the one and the nodding pink bags of the other, 



as they grew amid the tangle of 

 dead twigs about the foot of the 

 trees. To see them growing there 

 in their freshness one had to pinch 

 himself to realise that only a 

 hundred feet away was a much- 

 travelled road, lined with street 

 lamps, and that just beyond the 

 terrace was a most conventional 

 and ladylike border of coleus, 

 geranium, and the like. This was 

 my first great triumph. I had 

 brought to my very doors a bit of 

 woodland life such as Nature 

 reveals, as a great favour, to a 

 chosen few — something which 

 only those who seek her in her 

 most secluded haunts are ever 

 permitted to see. 



The most serious difficulty with 

 which I had to contend in the 

 construction of my wild garden was 

 the lack of natural moisture. A 

 small pond or running stream is almost a necessity. So many of our 

 most beautiful wild flowers live in the lush lowlands that a garden 

 that cannot at least approximate those conditions must perforce forego 

 many a handsome inhabitant. Of course, in my modest patch of 

 ground, with its total area of little more than a city lot, lakes and 

 rivulets were things merely to be dreamed of. Even so homely a 

 matter as a bit of swamp was beyond my power of production, all efforts 

 to that end resulting in nothing better than a mudhole. The best I could 

 do was to build of stone and cement a rectangular tank, which I connected 

 with one of the leaders of the house and thus made it do service as a miniature 

 pond. With the aid of the garden hose I had no trouble in keeping this full, 

 and the overflow kept the ground below it at all times fairly wet. In this 



Trillium grandiflorum, with toothwort in the foreground 



