, When from above the milder sun 

 Does through a fragrant Zodiac run ; 

 And as it works, the industrious bee 

 Computes its time as well as we ! 

 How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

 Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers ! 



Andrew Marvell. 



Saying all one feels and thinks 

 In clever daffodils and pinks; 

 In puns of tulips ; and in phrases 

 Charming for their truth, of daisies 

 Uttering as well as silence may. 

 The sweetest words the sweetest way. 



Leigh Hunt. 



In these the alphabet 

 Of flowers; how they devisedly being set 

 And bound up, might with speechless secrecy 

 Deliver errands mutely and mutually. ~ ^^ Honne 



^omen anD c^arDenssi 



As orchards to men, so are flowers and herbs to 

 women. Indeed the garden appears ceUbate, as 

 does the house, without womanly hands to plant 

 and care for it. ^^^^ ^^^„^^^ ^^^^„ 



In writing of her life near Albany, in the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, Mrs. Anne Grant has 

 left the'^foUowing record of the Dutch vrouws: — 



"The care of plants such as needed peculiar 

 care or skill to rear them, was the female province. 

 Every one in town or country had a garden. Into 

 this garden no foot of man intruded after it was dug 

 in the Spring. I think I see yet what I have so 

 often beheld — a respectable mistress of a family 



