A GARDEN OF ASSOCIATIONS 



By Charles Francis Saunders. 



TF you are a sincere lover of plant life, your garden is the 

 home of personal friends in whose family history, present 

 struggles to get on in the world, and prospects of success or 

 failure, you have something of the same sympathetic interest 

 as in the lot of your human fellows. Particularly is this so of 

 the perennial growths, which (unlike the annuals whose stay 

 is temporary) abide and take pot luck with you season after 

 season, through summer and through winter weather. How- 

 ever fickler acquaintances may flout you, these sturdy friends 

 present to you always with recurring springs, the same cheery 

 faces of encouragement, and, jogging dowai the years together, 

 you grow old in one another's company. So in setting out a 

 garden, the choice of the perennials is a subject for serious 

 judgment, that these attendants on your travel through life 

 shall be of such dignity and significance as will wear .well as 

 companions — that there shall be more to them than just good 

 looks; in other words, that they shall be plants that stand 

 for something. 



Personally I find particular pleasure in plants with a 

 history. By this I mean either that the special individual has 

 some story to tell or possesses some association which makes 

 it of interest ; or that it is of a race that has had a part in the 

 history of the world beyond my garden fence. Of the first sort 

 may be instanced plants from an ancestral garden which are 

 thus connected with your own or your family's past ; or those 

 raised from seeds or cuttings taken in some noted place, or 



