Lars 
fe 
The Lupin was mentioned by a Colonial chronicler as being found in 
a Boston garden in the year 1760 
and you will find that it can teach you more in an hour than 
many another has taught you in a season. 
A few years ago—fifty if you will—we were all imagin- 
ing that we had no history; to-day we realize we have made 
a great deal. We cannot whirl through the countryside and 
catch a glimpse of some old house, landmark of our Colonial 
era, that our hearts do not bound up within us with the 
pride we hold in all we have done since then. It is not be- 
cause this old pewter mug, or that old sampler, or these 
quaint candlesticks evoke our admiration merely in them- 
selves for their intrinsic worth that we bargain for them, col- 
lect them, and carry them off with us, to adorn our houses, 
with almost as much pride as the conquerors of old brought 
back their spoils to adorn the victory; it is because history 
‘The spicy-scented Valerian is the stately flower which our great-grand- 
mothers used to call Allheal 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
March, 1912 
and these things have gone hand in hand, a thing we love 
to be reminded of, the quality which lends to the “‘antique”’ 
its chief charm. That, too, is why we must have reproduc- 
tions of the old things, if the old things themselves are to 
be denied to us. So it is with gardens. The Englishman 
may walk among his box-bordered geometricies, his yew- 
covered paths; the Italian among his balustraded terraces, 
sentineled by Cypresses; the Hollander among his Tulip- 
beds, the Spaniard within his arbors of Jasmine, the French- 
man around his rows of Lilies, and the German about his 
shrubbery, his Moss-Roses and Forget-Me-Nots; but to the 
heart of every American that garden of flowers is the 
loveliest which carries with its perfume the reminiscent sug- 
gestion of those gardens of our cradle days, when Salem 
roasted witches but overlooked the enchantments of her 
dooryard, red with Four-o’Clocks, white with Candytufts, 
blue with Bachelor’s Buttons, and when the good folk of 
Boston village, each over his neighbor’s fence, discussed 
the newest Larkspur seed, the fantastic forms of the Gourd. 
We love to be reminded, too, of the garden at Mt. Vernon, 
of the bouquets that used to come fresh with the morning 
dew upon them to Mistress Dolly Madison, of the gardens 
where the brave boys in blue and the brave boys in gray 
played in their happy youth, taking little heed of the pro- 
phecy of the relentless Dicentra—Bleeding Heart, indeed! 
And so, when I come into a garden such as this one, 
where on a Summer’s day the hum of bees throws me into 
drowsy meditation and the winds waft sweet music of the 
nodding stems to listening ears, I say it 1s the best garden of 
all—your garden, my garden—Everyman’s garden. 
‘Tf they to whom God gives fair gardens knew 
The happy solace which sweet flowers bestow ; 
Where pain depresses, and where friends are few, 
To cheer the heart in weariness and woe.’’ 
These words of a poet, whose name has long since been for- 
gotten, come to one as he strolls through the banks of 
Delphinium, the lovely Larkspur of old-fashioned gardens, and the 
white Madonna Lily, L. candidum 
