14 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



turesque background for just what would be the correct 

 foreground did not occur to me at that instant. Sub rosa let 

 me confide that the foreground has been and continues to be a 

 perplexing problem, for under the shade of the trees the tall 

 pink hollyhocks, foxgloves and sweet williams planted there 

 have a shifty method of drying up in a time of famine, though 

 for two seasons they were beautiful, yet not quite coincident 

 with apple blooms; so I have come to regard the old stone 

 wall as a permanent background to the general garden, height- 

 ened by the green of the apple trees and the bed itself is little 

 more than an experiment-station where I test the endurance 

 of plants. 



Further: was there not a fine tangle of grape-vine that 

 needed a reconstructing hand to weave it through the boughs 

 for a natural arbor over a stone seat that could be built in the 

 corner, and a dozen yards more of it used as a covering for the 

 rustic fence to be made on the west side ? Surely less charms 

 than a stone wall, overhanging apple-trees, a grape-vine, a 

 possible arbor and a stone seat later found to be a great 

 promoter of rheumatic joints, because it was so shady 

 that it never got quite thawed out in summer have de- 

 cided more momentous questions than a garden site. In 

 ten minutes I laid out more work than I accomplished in a 

 whole year. 



Immediately I set to work with a large sheet of paper in 

 front of me for diagrams, my seed catalogues on the right 

 for I had foreclosed and taken possession of all current and 

 past issues of the seedsmen seeds in packages piled up on my 

 left, and doubly flanked on every side by seed lists Cornelia- 

 and-her-jewels fashion. These same books, lists and pack- 

 ages became my intimate companions. The daily paper 

 would be found under them; they strewed tables and chairs; 

 they preempted couch and floor space. I arranged and rear- 



