2 POPULAR GARDEN FLOWERS 



a gardener in proportion to his development as an 

 antiquarian, but most people find no difficulty in main- 

 taining their cultural standard, while learning all that 

 there is to know about the plants which they grow. 



A beautiful flower is worth studying from two points 

 of view its value as a garden object, and the part that it 

 has played in life and literature. In the former capacity 

 it adds to the pleasure of the present, in the latter it 

 links us with the past. 



The brilliant Anemone, the first of our list of popular 

 garden flowers, is a typical example of a flower that 

 has the double interest of garden beauty and legendary 

 association. In its different species and varieties it is 

 a garden plant of great value, owing to its hardiness, 

 the long period over which it blooms, and its brilliant 

 colours. The flower gardener loves it, because it gives 

 beautiful flowers for practically every month of the 

 year, and is particularly generous in winter and spring. 

 The litterateur regards it with special interest as the 

 flower referred to by Shakespeare in " Venus and 

 Adonis" : 



" By this, the boy that by her side lay killed 

 Was melted like a vapour from her sight, 

 And in his blood that on the ground lay spilled, 

 A purple flower sprang up chequered with white." 



The gardener might object that the flower which 

 Shakespeare had in view when he wrote these lines 

 could not have been the Anemone, inasmuch as it was 

 neither purple nor chequered. But it has to be re- 

 membered that with the mediaeval writers "purple" 

 had a much wider application than it has at the present 

 time. In the Latin purpureus it was used to describe 

 the Poppy. And with respect to chequering, it was 



