NELSON] A WILD FLOWER GARDEN 161 



We devote considerable space to flowers and vegetables, and 

 we enjoy them all, but from earliest spring to latest fall it is the 

 wild flower garden which attracts us many times a day and seems 

 always ready to reveal to us something new. I was requested 

 to tell how to have a wild flower garden. 



From personal experience we have learned that location and 

 soil are of the greatest importance. The garden should receive 

 sunlight at least two or three hours each day but for the remainder 

 of the time it should be protected, since the wood-land plants 



Figure 1. — Our Hepaticas. (The sunken board is shown) 



which always grow in shade would be injured. Besides the sun 

 dries out the earth too fast and keeps the plants too hot. The 

 soil should be neither stony nor sterile. If rich leaf -mould can 

 be secured, use it by all means. If it is not available use good 

 black soil. 



Our first attempt at a wild flower garden was in a small space 

 on the north side of a board fence about five feet high. What 

 few specimens we had at that time grew splendidly for several 

 summers. But one day our neighbor, the owner of the fence, 

 decided to have it removed and then our wild flower garden was 

 left the greater part of each day with no shelter from the sun's 

 rays, and the flowers began to show the effects very soon. 



Sometime later we secured the vacant lot to the north of us 

 and that afforded us a much larger strip of ground and on the 

 north side of another board fence, soon we began a wild flower 

 garden anew. We laid out a bed about thirty feet long by four 

 feet wide and to keep the grass of the lawn from spreading in, we 



