26 FLOWER GARDENING 
dominated by the too rare quality of common sense. 
Nature is the great fount of garden knowledge. 
Go to her for the elementals. From her you will 
learn how plants grow, bloom and ripen their seed; 
how natural gardens are planted, how colors are 
arranged, how the annual has its place and the 
perennial its, how winter protection is given, how 
evergreens serve a purpose—in short, the all of 
the how. 
The more you know nature the better gardener 
you will be. She teaches the why and wherefore 
of everything, if you will but open your eyes to 
see; and she makes learning a pleasant pastime. 
The whole point is this: All gardens are nature 
humanized, to a greater or less degree. The 
humanization proceeds successfully only as you fol- 
low natural laws. You may bend those laws a bit, 
for the time being, but you cannot alter them. 
Ignorance of first nature principles is shown on 
every side by the very bad habit of thinking that 
blossoms are the beginning and end of a plant. 
They are not; they are an episode in the life of a 
plant. In numerous instances they are not the 
most attractive episode; the foliage at one stage 
or another, or the seed, may be a great deal more 
beautiful. Let this sink firmly into the mind. A 
lily is more than blossoms; it is a plant, and one 
of a particular class in nature’s wise ordering of 
things. With that class always associate it. 
A person, whose family name happens to be 
Legion, once said when spring came around: “My 
