The Wild Garden 87 



for treasures for the wild garden does one realise how many lovely 

 ones have their being where the human eye almost never sees them ; 

 yet most of them can be grown successfully in much drier places 

 within easy access of one's home. The rose mallow from the 

 swamps, for example, thrives in a flower garden under the same 

 treatment given a hollyhock. Now that the cardinal flower is 

 commonly offered in seedsmen's catalogues it has found its way 

 into many flower beds, where, however brilliant the blossoms, its 

 ill fitting environment robs it of half its charm. 



It surprises most people to see how much a little cultivation 

 improves many of our wild flowers. When their fierce struggle 

 for existence may be relaxed, when every want is anticipated and 

 the plants may devote their entire energy to developing all their 

 latent loveliness, how fast it reveals itself! The blue wheels of 

 succory double their size; the boneset, another cosmopolitan weed, 

 spreads broader panicles of soft leaden white bloom than is its 

 wont; its next of kin, the Joe Pye weed, rears fleecy flowers of dull 

 Persian pink high above one's head ; the evening primrose becomes 

 a branching bush, asters multiply their stars, and the goldenrod, 

 in well fertilised, cultivated soil, astonishes all beholders by the 

 prodigal richness of its gold. 



Not the least claim for the wild garden is that it may be had 

 when the flower lover can afford no other. The rich man may 

 send abroad for foreign plants to naturalise in the wild parts of his 

 estate, or he may buy a freight-train load of native mountain laurel, 

 as more than one American enthusiast has done, but nature 

 knows no partiality. The poorest teacher in a rural school, with- 

 out a penny at her disposal, may take all her boys and girls from 

 their desks to nature's nursery in the woods and fields and bring 

 home in a borrowed farm waggon treasures enough to beautify the 



