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THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



August, 1912 



as J. W. Elliott or F. W. Farrer. No one 

 Taut a born garden hunter or a gentleman 

 whose ancestors have done no useful work 

 for three generations can hope to compete 

 with them in the gentle art of carping at 

 gardens. I shall never write a book on 

 the Technique of Luxury. I do not even 

 recommend my methods to other middle 

 class persons, like myself. I write this 

 only to oblige my old friend, the publisher, 

 and to call Seymour back in time for our 

 next trip. For the poor fellow is in Europe 

 now with an acute attack of Italian gar- 

 denitis, and the only way I see to pry him 

 loose is to open my mouth, put my foot in 

 it, and make a few faux pas, jeux d' esprit, 

 and pates defoie gras. For, of course, every- 

 thing I say in this article is wrong, and you 

 can imagine Seymour's feelings when he 

 opens this copy of The Garden Magazine 

 in the Petit Trianon. I am morally brac- 

 ing my feet now to prepare for his first 

 marconigram announcing his coming on the 

 next ship. 



But to return. Off we go in the cool 

 of the evening and arrive at our garden just 

 when the dusk is changing magenta from a 

 "holy terror" to a fascinating color — 

 mystic, wonderful. Then we make the 

 rounds of the garden, and when the wire 

 edge of my appetite for color is worked off, 

 we sit where we can see the afterglow, and 

 smoke, and watch the humming bird moths, 

 hovering by dozens over the flowers. 

 Sometimes we sit with watch on knee 

 waiting for the precise moment when the 

 ugly little Virginian stock suddenly opens 

 its tiny batteries of fragrance. And always 

 we refrain from cigars until the first great 

 gust of odor is wafted from sheets of phlox. 

 As the shadows deepen Seymour never 

 barks. Even if every principle of design 

 and law of the universe is double crossed 

 and put through the ropes he doesn't care. 

 And, if there is running water in the garden, 

 we are absolutely content. After a while 

 the garden gets so dark that we can see only 

 spectral masses of white, where we know 

 the snapdragons spire through the night, 

 and our souls float on floods of incense 

 conjured by that gorgeous enchantress 



(cruelly choked and tied to stakes by day) 

 — the golden banded lily of Japan. Just 

 when we begin to see visions and re-live 

 precious memories, there is a mighty 

 jarring of chairs within the house, course 

 14 comes to a close, and the parlor as- 

 sumes a "party light up." Then we 

 heave a great sigh, drag ourselves to the 

 car, and go back amid the stars and ozone 

 thinking lovingly of the coming night's 

 rest. 



I spare you the morning programme, for 

 I am not very "long" on Aurora and the 

 larks, and I wear thin rubbers against the 

 dew. But which period is the lovelier I 

 never expect to know. Seymour wrangles 

 by the hour on either side and marshals 

 his arguments like a dominie, even unto the 

 thirtiethlies. 



I promised to say nothing helpful, but 

 I must make one exception, if only to save 

 myself from the reproach of consistency. 

 On one point Seymour and I are agreed — 

 never start on a vacation without a theme. 

 "And follow it?" you cry, in dismay. I 

 never said anything of the sort. Joe Par- 

 sons, the master at whose feet I love to sit, 

 taught me my first lesson, in these exact 

 words: "Always hang your travels on a 

 theme. Never go merely sight-seeing, and 

 never start out just for a walk or exercise. 

 Whether you follow your plan is of no im- 

 portance, but if you have a theme, you 

 will have something better than everybody 

 else, and all the other sights will be added 

 unto you." My theme is gardens. Can 

 you beat it? 



Of course, Seymour and I may blow up 

 before the next fifteen years go by. One 

 year I got so sick of color harmony and Miss 

 Jekyll's classic " Color in the Flower Gar- 

 den" being spouted night and day that I 

 thought I should die. The year that we 

 confined ourselves to seaside gardens I 

 now regard as a relatively monotonous 

 performance. Once Seymour had formal 

 gardens so bad I had to remodel the auto- 

 mobile in order to take in his titanic Triggs, 

 Latham, and "Gardens of Italy" without 

 which he wouldn't stir a step. Sometimes 

 I think Seymour is getting a little mellower, 



witness 1S99, when we went to see all those 

 Colonial gardens and Seymour refused to 

 stick his nose into a place that was less 

 than 100 years old. But maybe that 

 was only an "off year." For he certainly 

 had an "on" year when his phagocytes 

 were fighting the privacy microbe in his 

 veins, and I had to see all those walled 

 gardens, shelter belts, screens, boundary 

 plantings, tall shrubberies, and assorted 

 arsenals. Morevoer his photographic 

 mania increases year by year so that now 

 I have barely room for my feet. He even 

 squeezes socialistic pamphlets on gardening 

 into the medicine chest and sacred hamper. 



But I think it more likely that the auto- 

 mobile will blow up before Seymour does. 

 Although he is armed to the teeth with the 

 battery of a pedant, he always stops short 

 of being a professor and he has a positive 

 genius for silence at the right time. The 

 only thing I really fear is that he will get 

 Roman fever from visiting gardens in the 

 day time, and then going right into the 

 house of a Boston blue stocking with letters 

 of introduction. Or he may get "nervous 

 pros" from shuffling his card indexes of 

 "where to go." It is a wonder to me he 

 never got suffocated by the boa-like coils of 

 his own system, or sank out of sight amid 

 the quicksands of scientific management. 

 With the useless facts he knows he could 

 write a cyclopedia. 



One nightmare I never have — the fear 

 that the supply of gardens will run out. 

 True, the list of places he will not let me 

 enter now runs into the thousands, and his 

 Index Expurgatorius would require another 

 car to carry. But the moment I get home 

 someone asks "Did you see the So-and-So 

 garden?" 



"No." 



"Well, you missed it. It's the best 

 ever." 



I suppose so. The biggest fish always 

 gets away. That's the fun of garden 

 hunting — angling next year for the ones 

 you missed this year. 



I describe gardens? No sir-ee! But I 

 will show you some of the gardens that 

 interested us, if you like! 



Miss Kneeland's garden, the greatest prize winner at Lenox. Mass., and famous 

 for its great masses of floral color, especially phlox 



The famous garden of Weld, belonging to Mr. Larz Anderson. Brookline, Mass. 

 Designed by C. A. Piatt. Foxgloves and sweet Williams 



