The Wild Garden 83 



Dutch, Belgian and English growers of these plants alone ! "Ameri- 

 can gardens," with these splendid representatives of the heath family 

 as a basis, have been features of not a few fine English estates for 

 many years. It gives the American traveller food for reflection 

 to see not only American rhododendrons, laurel and azaleas, but 

 New England asters and other members of that starry tribe, the 

 tall Canadian goldenrod, the burnt orange umbels of butterfly 

 weed, wood and field lilies, rose mallow from New Jersey tide- 

 water meadows, fleecy spired clethra, flowering dogwoods and 

 viburnums, trilliums, bloodroot and meadow rue, and even our 

 despised velvety mullein among many other cherished plants 

 from home, blooming contentedly on the ancestral soil of a 

 British peer. 



Strange as it may seem, quantities of our wild flowers, includ- 

 ing the shy little orchids, are exported annually by American 

 specialists, who rarely receive an order, however, without a foreign 

 postage stamp on the envelope. As a rule, even we few Americans 

 who delight in wild gardening have not learned to buy plants from 

 nurserymen who grow them from seed, rather than despoil the 

 woods and roadsides about our homes. Impulsively we dig up 

 plants, whenever or wherever we find them, usually when they 

 are in bloom, often when no place has been prepared to receive 

 their dry roots and fainting forms, and yet we feel discouraged 

 when they die. Who can resist the pure white blossoms of the 

 bloodroot, the speckled yellow bell of the little trout lily or adder's 

 tongue, and the lavender blue hepaticas ? The temptation to 

 dig up the plants at once rather than in August when they are 

 resting, too often proves irresistible. Few of us have the patience 

 to drive marked stakes beside the flowering plants that we may 

 wish to lift, and return, perhaps months afterward, to transplant 



