The Garden Magazine, July, 1922 



319 



ture " which every member should read before presuming to sit 

 at the feet of Wisdom. 



Spontaneity the Keynote 



SO HERE we are as a garden club facing that after-harvest 

 when the fruits have been garnered and the question is 

 whether the straw and the corn-stalks are worth the effort of 

 hauling. Facing dissolution, the club reduced its dues from five 

 dollars to one dollar, hoping thereby to bring in all the small 

 gardeners with their tremendous enthusiasms. We hope now 

 to have members enough to assure a quorum at every meeting. 

 Of course a small circle of dependable enthusiasts is much better, 

 but no club can be born twice. Then we are making an effort 

 to get back into our gardens, away from exhibition tables and 

 the hard folding chairs of the lecture room. We have revived 

 the morning meeting (monthly) without any of the folderol 

 of our original constitution and by-laws. We just get to- 

 gether to talk about garden matters. Nobody holds the floor; 

 there is a general chatter, in which the shyest, newest member 

 may unblushingly hold forth. I admit that the servant ques- 

 tion and other extraneous worldly matters intrude upon pure 

 horticulture. But after all the most important thing about 

 gardening is the garden, and we are there in it, seeing it, breath- 

 ing it, strolling about in it. We are supposed to exchange plants 

 at these meetings, but exchanging plants is a very complicated 

 procedure. We have stipulated that plants for exchange shall 

 be brought to the meetings, or a list shall be sent, the duplicate 

 of which is held by the gardener who is instructed to surrender 

 the items upon demand. The latter device eliminates much of 

 the embarrassment of giving and receiving. It even -gives an 

 excuse for running in on your neighbor just to see if she hap- 

 pens to have anything you might conceivably want. A few 

 such visitors will inspire any garden owner to feel that having 

 a garden is worth the effort. The American garden is an objec- 

 tive garden, a garden of palpable effects; and if no one will come 

 to see your effects till after storm and drought have laid them 

 low, why it's better economy to put the money into jewelry 

 that you can wear in the crowded street. 



We have thought of having garden parties or afternoons 

 "at home." The club sends out the cards and so lends its aus- 

 pices. But these larger, more formal occasions (weather per- 

 mitting) do not promise as well as the morning rendezvous. We 

 still stage our three exhibitions, but most of the rules have been 

 slashed away. I think that growing for exhibition ruins the 

 garden as a garden, much as it contributes in other respects. I 

 know very well that some garden clubs make a great thing of 

 their shows, but perhaps we are too busy with golf and bathing 

 here. We shall eventually be reduced to exhibiting Tulips with- 

 out distinction of Darwins, Cottage, or Breeders. "A vase of 

 Tulips," or "An arrangement of Tulips with other flowers," or 

 "A display of Tulips, not to exceed fifty blooms." We can't 

 ask a judge to judge such a show, but we can do better; we 



can judge for ourselves, knowing nothing but knowing what 

 we like, by the simple expedient of a general ballot. The 

 results will- tend to establish new criteria, I hope, in which 

 the biggest or reddest flower will not invariably capture the 

 championship. 



Finding New Ways 



I AM dealing with no glorious enthusiasms and golden illusions; 

 I speak from the hard-pan of practical necessity. If we are 

 to survive as a useful organization, contributing anything to the 

 joy of gardening, we have got to find a new way. The infant 

 society for the preservation of our national wild-flowers (seeds 

 of which are best obtained from Switzerland!) is an excellent 

 step forward by associated gardeners. We could not con- 

 ceivably get up a club picnic party to go "smelling for flowers" 

 in the woods and fields. Such a party would run up against 

 many previous engagements. Besides, we have practically no 

 woods and fields, and these are swept bare by Sunday trippers. 

 This ought to make us more sensible to the need of taking inter- 

 est in native plants, but it is an interest that provides an activity 

 of doubtful benefit to the cause. In my own case have I an- 

 swered that question by buying native plants from the dealers 

 who are accused of despoiling nature. I am grateful to them. 



I count a number of possibilities by way of new interests. We 

 have no rocks, hence no rockeries, ergo no rare plants. Collect- 

 ing rare plants and swapping them, comparing notes, and all 

 that, is something I hope we may work up. And there is hy- 

 bridization. I wonder how many garden clubs, besides Short 

 Hills, New Jersey, go in for growing new varieties. Where all 

 the standard activities of other garden clubs seem to fail us — 

 shows, village beautiful work, lectures, inter-club activities — 

 nevertheless, I believe we are finding an upward path out of our 

 difficulties — difficulties that other clubs seem mercifully to have 

 been spared. 



While the great American passion for organization, for badges 

 of office and meetings and parliamentary procedure and com- 

 mittee work and red-tape and beribboned barges and all that 

 sort of thing which begins on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, with 

 the Thanatopsis Club and the Jolly Seventeen — while this pas- 

 sion stirs no pulse in this sophisticated community, while we 

 lack even club-consciousness enough to act as a club in associa- 

 tion with other clubs, we are, I think, justifying our existence 

 as an organization. When in the face of dissolution it was put 

 to the vote whether we should cease to continue as a club we 

 found that to dissolve was impossible; we were an institution. 

 We became aware of a membership of well over a hundred, and 

 of a score or more of very beautiful gardens. The essential 

 interest was there, buried deep under other more pressing en- 

 gagements. In fact, I believe we have greater opportunities for 

 justifying our existence as an organization than many another 

 more flourishing club. And in this realization I venture to say 

 that we are booming. 



IV. THE SOUTH SPEAKS CONSTRUCTIVELY 

 HATTIE W. CARTER 



President of the Lexington (Kentucky) Garden Club 



IHESE suggestions — practical and of much benefit to 

 our own club — are offered in the hope that they may 

 interest and stimulate the organizing of garden clubs 

 elsewhere. I wish there might be, and believe that 

 some day there will be, clubs in every county and state of the 

 Union. If some reader of this article organizes even one garden 

 club somewhere, I am more than repaid — and great pleasure 

 will be hers, I am sure; and for my part I am happy at any 

 time to help forward this great movement in every way pos- 

 sible. 



What We Are Striving For 



THE objects to which our energies are directed are many: 

 to encourage and promote the beautifying of country 

 homes, villages, school playgrounds, parks, roadways, rural 

 counties as well as cities; to create a love in the rising generation 

 for, and disseminate a broader knowledge of, the best varieties of 

 flowers, bulbs, shrubs, trees; to strictly observe Arbor Day, to 

 especially encourage and promote school gardening, the study 

 of ornamental horticulture, and to instil the love of planting 



