THE WILD GARDEN. ^ 



The wild garden is bounded by snow-banks, the heaping drift 

 of November on the one hand, and the thawing ice of March on 

 the other, and the hardy hepatica, witch-hazel, and chickweed 

 open and close the floral season. 



But in paying our tribute to the exceptional vigor of these 

 plants, we are entirely forgetting a noted group which hold the 

 honors for hardihood. 



Did the " Appalachian " climber ever stop to think what our 

 mountain summits would be without the heath ? True, we have 

 none of the heather that impurples the Highland fells of Great 

 Britain, but that foreign type is replaced with us by other species 

 that paint our June mountain ranges with beauty; inspiring mis- 

 sionaries whose mission it is to soften the grim austerity of the 

 crags, to reclaim the bleak desert and reconcile the earth and sky 

 in short, to carry the garden heavenward. It would indeed be 

 like taking the entire garment from the granite backs of the 

 White Hills were we to withdraw the heath -blooms. How they 

 tuft and pillow the crags and spurs ! What a troop of them, 

 too! Rhododendrons and azaleas, with their purple glow flood- 

 ing the chaparral ; bilberries of several kinds making green many 

 a chink and cranny among the rocks; the moss-like cassiope with 

 its nodding bells; dwarf blueberries and cranberries, and cow- 

 berries with their deep red and tonic acid fruit. The pretty yel- 

 low phyllodoce is here, and the ledum with its leaves backed with 

 their woollen blanket carefully hemmed at its edges, and various 

 others. 



Always fresh and green, their blossoms ruddy with the blast 

 or drenched with the flying, freezing scud, exposed to the fiercest 

 storms, even incased in solid ice or buried deep for months be- 

 neath mountainous depths of snow, they dwell in peace, and in 

 abiding faith expand their blossom-buds for spring. Do they not 

 speak to us ? 



"Oh, lovely is the rose!" who, indeed, shall challenge its beau- 

 ty? This nodding "Mermet" in the beam of sunlight within 

 the conservatory, for instance. What lush life and sensuous con- 

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