18 MY GROWING GARDEN 



But I want here in this garden more of the 

 Pennsylvania good things that bloom; just as I 

 should, I hope, prefer to have an Ohio garden, if I 

 lived in that state of presidents, or a Massachusetts 

 garden if I inhabited that very particular form of 

 existence. I often wonder why people will con- 

 tinually plant monkey gardens, imitating some- 

 thing from somewhere else! I have seen the 

 futile struggle for blue-grass lawns in Fort Worth, 

 with the richly velvety Bermuda grass belonging 

 comfortably there; and I have been angered at the 

 folly of transplanting Newport and Bar Harbor to 

 St. Augustine and Miami in the gardens provided 

 around the hotels for the painfully rich. My dis- 

 position, therefore, for a home-state garden here 

 is rooted in odious comparisons. 



I see places here for some native rhododendrons 

 and some laurels from our hillsides; and I am 

 hoping these can be invited within my price range, 

 for they will not be so financially repellent as the 

 haughty hybrids "made in Belgium." The soil of 

 this garden is without any limestone character, 

 and if I can gather or get some of nature's compost 

 or "leaf -mold," I ought to be able to have some- 

 thing worth while in these ericaceous plants, 

 "collected" from the woods. Parenthetically, I 

 wish the catalogue men would tell what they 



