THE SWEET PEA. 53 



would be astonished at the results. By thin sowing Ave get fine 

 flowers and in abundance. 



" The work of Mr. Eckford with the Sweet Pea shows how much 

 may be done with simple and often neglected things in our gar- 

 dens. The Sweet Pea certainly was always one of the most 

 valued of flowers, but now, with so many delicate and lovely 

 ihues, Sweet Peas are a garden of beauty. Who knows how many 

 other things in our gardens may not have in them the germs of 

 like improvement ? Even some of the shrubs that now have only 

 one aspect for us may some day show us a like variety. In any 

 case we owe many charming things for our open-air gardens 

 to Mr. Eckford, and wish him many happy years more of his 

 charming and iiseful work." 



You would easily take Mr. Eckford for a retired professional 

 gentleman, his face and figure hardly betraying the years he has 

 spent as a gardener, and in hand to hand contest with the soil. 

 He has been a priest of nature, and has grown old gracefully by 

 reason of the masterly profession of extorting from Nature her 

 deeper secrets. Some of his best life's work has been on Primu- 

 las, Cinerarias, and Pansies, lie having received as high as sixteen 

 guineas an ounce for some seed. His trials of culinary Peas 

 were a revelation to me. I shall never forget how one day he 

 allowed two ladies to wander at will through the grounds, and 



one of them came exclaiming, " Oh, Mr. Eckford, Mrs. ■ 



found a pod with thirteen peas ! " Mr. Eckford knew too well 

 just where every specially fine pod was, and even to touch one 

 in such a sacred place was more than his years of gracious cour- 

 tesy could allow. It is a rare privilege to enter such a floral 

 workshop, and the hedge about it is high, and the tall gates are 

 well padlocked, and there is a sentinel near by. I was shown 

 into Vilmorin's floral workshop just out of Paris, and the walls 

 about it are like State's prison barriers. There are no jewels 

 that can compare in value with tiny seeds, especially after twenty 

 years of special work are locked up in such a seed. In 1893 one 

 seed, by some inexplicable law, produced a dwarf Sweet Pea. In 

 1896 the world was supplied with the product of that one seed, 

 and whatever the merit of " Cupid " w^s, it certainly illustrated 

 the enterprise of a modern seed-house in multiplying and distrib- 

 uting the product of so small a thing as a single seed. 



Coming back to Mr. Eckford's work, we owe Boston a debt for 



