"Should I not love my flowers, 



My flowers that bloom and pine, 

 Unseen, unsought, unwatched for hours 



By any eye but Mine ? 

 Should I not love my flowers ? 



I love my lilies tall, 

 My marigold with constant eyes, 

 Each flower that blows, each flower that dies, 



To Me, I love them all. 

 I gather to a heavenly bower 



My roses fair and sweet; 

 I hide within my breast the flower 



That grows beside my feet." 



Dora Greenwell. 



The love of a garden, like love itself, like 

 charity, never fails. ^ ReynM 



of tlje 



People whose lives, and those of their parents 

 before them, have been spent in dingy tenements, 

 and whose only garden is a rickety soap-box high 

 up on a fire-escape, share this love, which must have 

 a plant to tend, with those whose gardens cover 

 acres and whose plants have been gathered from all 

 the countries of the world. 



How often in summer, when called to town, and 

 when driving through the squalid streets to the fer- 

 ries, or riding on the elevated road, one sees these 

 gardens of the poor! Sometimes they are only a 

 Geranium or two, or the gay Petunia. Often a tall 

 Sunflower, or a Tomato plant red with fruit. 

 These efforts tell of the love of the growing things, 

 and of the care that makes them live and blossom 

 against all odds. One feels a thrill of sympathy 

 with the owners of the plants and wishes that some 



