154 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
nor a hundred other dainty tidbits that are their own excuse 
for being. But I can close my eyes when a thousand miles 
away from them and make an exact diagram of each bed with 
its loved tenants. I often think that to inherit a garden, would 
be much like coming into possession of another’s life at middle 
age. One would not know what to expect. What complica- 
tions would arise! How little would be understood! 
My next reason is that a garden gratifies my love of color 
and form. I do not care for it so much as a mass, although it 
is very beautiful with its successive waves of pink, blue and 
white—the white recurring at intervals like a chorus in the 
midst of a continuous melody; I love to descend to particulars, 
to get down close to a plant, study its manner of growth, the 
form and texture of leaf and petal and their markings, ob- 
serve the perfect harmony of color and number as presented 
in stem, leaf, calyx, corolla and stamens. The stamens of 
some flowers are indescribably beautiful. I have sat and 
watched the soft gray green stamens and white filaments of 
a grayish lavender poppy until they seemed the most perfect 
example of beauty in all the world. I know one sensitive soul, 
who said to me once with brimming eyes, as we stood looking 
at a pale pink gladiolus with its lavender anthers, “It is so 
beautiful, it hurts.” What could be more lovely than the 
carmine stems of the Stephenandra flexuosa, or the mahogany 
stems of the Gaura; or the red-tipped foliage of the Spirea 
superba; or the heart of a Lancaster rose or an oriental poppy; 
or the lyre-shaped markings in the throat of the martynia; or 
the bearded throat of the iris or Pogonia? Emerson says: “I 
do not so much marvel at the beauty of the world, as at the 
necessity of beauty.” 
A third and very cogent reason for my garden is to distrib- 
ute the roots and seeds about the country side. With few 
exceptions perennials increase so rapidly either from the root 
