106 MY GROWING GARDEN 



both eye and appetite may be served simulta- 

 neously. A garden of vegetables is to me a beautiful 

 thing, if it is a good garden. The tendrils of the 

 pea that is sweet to the taste are as daintily cling- 

 ing, and as I have before said and shown, its 

 flowers are but less conspicuous than those of the 

 pea that is wholly ornamental. Few plants in the 

 flower border produce foliage so delicately cut or so 

 decorative in greenery as that of the carrot. Yellow 

 beans are handsome as they hang from well- 

 grown plants, and a row or a field of celery is a 

 pleasing sight. Well-trained tomato plants, hung 

 with red fruits, are brilliantly decorative, and 

 peppers are as much so. And what exotic even 

 approaches the stately tropical beauty of maize, 

 or corn; what sight in any flower garden, or what 

 scent, surpasses the sight and the scent of that same 

 corn as the morning breeze of a warm summer day 

 plays over it? 



I have stoutly maintained that from the appear- 

 ance standpoint I have a complete right to mix 

 my plantings of vegetables and flowers and fruits, 

 if I like. So parsley has, in my growing garden, 

 edged a border, and lettuce as well; so the prize 

 row of sweet peas ran next a row of grape-vines 

 one year; so the cosmos succeeded and supple- 

 mented the foliage of the asparagus border; so my 



