THE WILD GARDEN 



A PLEA FOR OUR NATIVE PLANTS 



ANY persons, I find, are 

 under the impression that 

 we have few, if any, native 

 flowering plants and shrubs 

 that are worthy a place 

 in the home-garden. They 

 have been accustomed to 

 consider them as " wild things," and " weeds," 

 forgetting or overlooking the fact that all plants 

 are wild things and weeds somewhere. So un- 

 familiar are they with many of our commonest 

 plants that they fail to recognize them when they 

 meet them outside their native haunts. Some 

 years ago I transplanted a Solidago, — better 

 known as a " Golden Rod," — from a fence-cor- 

 ner of the pasture, and gave it a place in the 

 home-garden. There it grew luxuriantly, and 

 soon became a great plant that sent up scores of 

 stalks each season as high as a man's head, every 

 one of them crowned with a plume of brilliant 

 yellow flowers. The effect was simply magnifi- 

 cent. 



One day an old neighbor came along, and 



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