March, 1915 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



67 



Your Garden of Dreams 



DESPITE the inclemency of the wea- 

 ther, despite the earliness of the 

 year, never has the garden been 

 more beautiful to look upon than it is 

 at the present time. — In your mind, of 

 course. As a matter of strict, unpoetic 

 accuracy, the backyard — it is too early in 

 the year yet to accord it the dignity of 

 naming it a garden — presents a singu- 

 larly uninspiring appearance. The bare 

 borders are covered with snow, the beds 

 are untended wastes, and the lawn is a 

 bare expanse, mantled in white. 



But the seedsman's catalogues have 

 begun to arrive, firing imagination, and 

 making one oblivious to fact. For weeks 

 past they have been coming to hand, 

 and still they are popped into the mail 

 box. They come in all shapes and sizes, 

 uniform only in the vast bunch of won- 

 derful flowers pictured on the outer 

 cover. 



You satiate your imagination with the 

 catalogues, and then you close your 

 eyes. Immediately there rises before 

 you a vision of your garden made per- 

 fect with the things you intend to grow 

 this year. That bed in the corner, 

 hitherto only producing a crop of sweet 

 Williams by stubborn persistence, shall 

 sport carnations and lilies. That border 

 by the wood shed, where nothing but 

 dandelions will ever grow, shall sprout 

 this summer with the choicest novelties. 

 Of course, you very well know that no- 

 thing of the kind will happen, but the 

 visions continue obstinately optimistic. 

 Year after year you have planned such 

 developments in the garden, year after 

 year fate, the poorness of soil, and the 

 predations of cats and dogs have brought 

 your noble efforts to nought. 



But still you resolutely plan, for you 

 are convinced that the very best part of 

 gardening consists in making your plans 

 for the coming season. There is no 

 arduous physical toil about it, there are 

 no disasters with spades, no emotional 

 moments with shears that refuse to cut, 

 lawn mowers that decline to mow. 



You plan generously, for imagination 

 is never mean over a few packets of seed, 

 never hesitates over a dollar. You pur- 

 chase mentally, you sow mentally, wast- 

 ing neither time nor labor. And, with- 

 out any of that dreary waiting, your 

 garden blooms immediately ; and — 

 crowning benefit of planning — if you 

 don't like the effect, you just rearrange 

 it all in a twinkling, and your garden 

 Ijlossoms again on quite a different 

 scheme. 



The joys of planning a garden ! When 

 the catalogues have set you going pro- 

 perly, you might as well have three or 

 four acres for all the fun you get out of 

 the little pocket - handkerchief space at 



the back of your house. You mentally 

 plant trees — the fruit trees continuously 

 bearing immense crops — and enlarge the 

 lawn and mask the walls behind wonder- 

 ful creepers. 



Then comes the reluctant elimination, 

 reducing cost and quantity to accord 

 with the modesty of your purse and gar- 

 den. And then comes the first selec- 

 tion. You gloat over it lovingly, and 

 again you see the garden all a-growing 

 and a-blowing beyond comment. Cats 

 and birds do not exist in that wonderful 

 dream-garden ; the dog never gives way 

 to the avarice of burying bones in the 

 borders ; late frosts and the boisterous 

 winds never visit that fairy realm. 



Always it is midsummer ,and always 

 you are pointing out the beauty of your 

 garden to some envious neighbors. 



.'\nd so you go on, dreaming over the 

 garden and altering your visionary plans 

 each time another catalogue arrives. 

 And, finally, the catalogues cease to ar- 

 rive, and you discover that the time for 

 actual performance has come. 



And then — ah, well ! 



But, however the experts may sneer 

 at the resultant baldness of our efforts 

 in summer, no one can see a more beau- 

 tiful garden than you see in yours, when 

 you draw your chair a little closer to the 

 stove, and, dropping the newest seed 

 catalogue to the floor, close your eyes 

 for a few moments of horticulture! 

 rapture. 



Health and a Hundred Dollars — Hoiv I Gained 



Both Last Sumnver 



Miss £. M., Quebec 



I WAS a stenographer with a good po- 

 sition in a near-by city, when the 

 doctor summarily ordered me "back 

 to the land," and sentenced me to a 

 year's hard labor — he termed it "plenty 

 of exercise in the open air" — ^with the 

 option of pain and a nervous break- 

 down as the penalty of disobedience. In 

 this way I was brought suddenly face to 

 face with the problem of how to put in 

 the year salaryless. Any of the many 

 girls who have experienced the happy 

 sense of independence the drawing of 

 a regular salary affords, will realize 

 what it meant to me to have my hands 



tied and my income suddenly cut off. 

 Soon I was busy trying to devise means 

 of following the doctor's instructions, 

 and at the same time "turning an hon- 

 est penny." Presently an idea came to 

 me ; I spent some days working it out 

 on paper before I satisfied myself that 

 it was a plan worth trying at least. The 

 idea was "sweet peas." 



In the city where I had been for years 

 employed, I and my friends had bought 

 them at twenty-five cents for a small 

 bunch, even in the height of the season, 

 and many a time I had thought with re- 

 gret of the beauties I used to grow in my 





Liiium Longiflorum Grown Out-of-door* in an Amateur'i Garden 



This splendid bed of Liiium Longiflorum was grown by .Mr. Witmer, of Berlin, Ont. It has been 

 cultivated for several years and has withstood the severe winters. The bed is nine feet wide by 

 twenty feet long. The stems grew to a height of four to five feet. 



