224 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



swamp and pond plants serve to keep the soil about them moist also. Such 

 shrubs as willows and button bush have been planted near them, along 

 with moisture-loving herbs and sedges. In one tub there is a clump of cat- 

 o-nine-tails and tall bog rushes;, with the lance-leaved white violet, marsh 

 marigold and like flowers growing luxuriantly about its base. Some of 

 the plants that are not native to Lynn which were added last year, like the 

 mandrake and twisted stalk, are doing well, and a handsome western 

 rudbeckia is spreading like a weed near the little pond. The new bed 

 devoted to ferns is being gradually developed with special care that soil 

 and drainage be right. Press of other garden work still precludes the 

 accurate mapping of the wild garden beds with their nearly three hundred 

 native species of shrubs, vines, herbs, grasses, sedges, and ferns. This 

 year seeds of some of the more desirable native plants have been collected 

 and a number of species are being raised from seed. It is planned to train 

 the children thereby so that they may both grow native plants in home 

 gardens and so that they shall lovingly protect flowers in their native 

 haunts. 



Two beds were again devoted to spring flowering bulbs and to annuals. 

 These give opportunity to train pupils in the proper care of the flowers 

 most commonly used in home gardens. Some twenty annuals were grown 

 this year. Another bed was once more used for the grains, fiber plants, 

 and the like. Exhibits from these beds were awarded first prizes by the 

 Houghton Horticultural Society. We plan another year to grow many 

 named varieties of one or two annuals, to impress upon the children the 

 possibilities in this direction. Similarly the bed used for a variety of com- 

 mercial plants hitherto, will l)e planted with a large range of the more 

 important fodder crops. The vines on the south wall of the schoolhouse 

 have been protected so that they are now mounting rapidly toward the 

 eaves. Deep emplacements of soil have been made along the street front 

 of the buildings, and vines are being raised from seed to be set out another 

 spring. 



The most marked advance of the present year has been in the depart- 

 ment of hardy perennial flowering plants. In the spring one large bed 

 was devoted to divisions and seedlings, and this work has been greatly 

 extended as the season progressed. It is our aim to propagate hardy 

 plants for distribution as prizes to the children having successful home 

 gardens; for exchange with amateurs and with nurserymen that the variety 

 of hardy plants in the school garden may be increased; and for sale to the 

 citizens, both for the support of the school garden work and for the beauti- 

 fying of the home grounds of the city. To further the latter purpose a 

 catalogue of the hardy plants ready for sale was prepared by the use of 

 illustrations and descriptions cut from trade catalogues. We have been 

 too busy to press sales or even to circtilate the catalogue thus far this 

 autumn, but one sale of ten dollars' worth of plants has been made and 

 others for smaller amounts. We believe a large field of civic usefulness 



