8 4 



The American Flower Garden 



them during their dormant season, and then only when we have 

 holes and soil prepared to receive them, water and mulch at hand, 

 canvas or paper to hold a generous ball of soil around each root, 

 and a waggon to rush them to their new home. Not many people 

 study a plant's natural habitat and attempt to give it a similar one 

 in their wild garden. We learn only by sad experience that the 

 great white trilliums which were so beautiful in the rich, moist 

 woods die on a dry upland where barberries, butterfly weed and 

 black-eyed Susans would feel more at home; that to expose the 

 fine, fibrous roots of laurel, rhododendrons or azaleas to the sun 

 and wind, or plant them in an unprotected situation, is even more 

 fatal to them than to the dogwood; that the arbutus rarely lives 

 after transplanting, no matter how carefully it may have been 

 moved, and that wild roses, not vigorously pruned before they 

 are lifted in early spring, generally refuse to put out a leaf. It is 

 usually wiser, and certainly far less trouble, perhaps even less 

 costly, to buy wild plants trained for travelling by a reliable grower, 

 who will ship them properly packed at the right season and answer 

 all our cultural questions, than to risk failure and heartbreak 

 through experimenting. But oh! what fun one misses! 



Your true gardener is not to be cheated out of those 

 excursions to the woods and meadows that are his chief joy. He, 

 as well as the nurseryman, learns by observation, study or inquiry 

 what are the fixed requirements of his favourite plants, and these 

 he spares no pains to meet. If ferns are his hobby, he will soon 

 find a moist, shady corner, sheltered from the wind, for the maiden 

 hair, rocks for evergreen spleenworts and polypodies, a northern 

 slope for a variety of shield ferns, a home among rhododen- 

 drons for the royal fern and the fragrant, finely cut fronds of 

 Dicksonia. 



