A PLEA FOR INFORMAL GARDENING. 



579 



flood of the rising moon sifts through the tree's filmy 

 branches, remembering that " the groves were God's first 

 temples, " we offer praise to Him for this pillar that is 

 left to us. 



I have only given a hint of the possibilities for pleasure 

 we have found in our garden these 25 years. In the 



brilliant sunshine of early spring-time, under the patter- 

 ing summer rain, in the days of whirling gusts and fall- 

 ing leaves, and when the " boughs shake against the cold, 

 bare, ruined choirs," it has had a perennial changing 



beauty, 



/e and loving in its sympathy. 



E. B. Walker. 



A PLEA FOR INFORMAL GARDENING. 



STYLES ADMIRABLE AND OTHERWISE. 



ECAUSE all flowers are beautiful, 

 must any flower-garden therefore 

 be beautiful ? This is not a nec- 

 essary consequence. Evergreens 

 are very handsome, yet it is pos- 

 sible to grow them so that nothing 

 could be more hideous. There is 

 certainly a relative beauty m gar- 

 dens, and I wish to point out 

 some that are very low down in the scale. 



Perhaps you will not object to my stating first some 

 garden styles that I especially like. First of all, a very 

 wild one, where the plants are set in beds that you happen 

 on in cozy nooks ; and where the beds themselves are only, 

 enlargements on nature's plantings. Some of the best 

 flowers for such beds are wildings. I have nothmg m 

 my grounds more beautiful than the mass of violets, tril- 

 liums, bloodroots, etc., that my boys have collected and. 

 planted under a group of huge mock-orange trees and< 

 bush-honeysuckles. In a wide corner overrun with Iily- 

 of-the-valley, and in a mass of tropseolums trailing about 

 the foot of a clump of red-barked dogwoods and climbmg 

 up the twigs, I also take great delight. 



A vegetable-garden might be laid out for beauty as 

 well as utility. Our mothers and fathers favored such, 

 mi.xtures, and they always took visitors to walk about the 

 garden — meaning the garden of all sorts. There were 

 rows of nasturtiums along the edges of the onion-beds, 

 and a center plot for lilacs and pinks — the dear old grass- 

 pink, the sweetest pink that ever grew. Then there were 

 clove-carnations, entirely hardy and deliciously sweet ■ 

 who has these real old clove-carnations now ? Saffron 

 made a sunny border at the foot of the garden, and was 

 picked by us to make teas for all sorts of ills. Fennel 

 and dill were needed on Sunday, for the sermons were 

 one hour long and prayers nearly half an hour. Cara- 

 way we always had in cookies : bless the dear old-fash- 

 ioned cookies ! they have vanished too. 



I like a garden full of plain rows of roses and lilies and 



gladioluses, where one can go up and down and compare 

 varieties. When we undertake to cultivate a large as- 

 sortment, say 2,000 bulbs of 100 sorts of gladioluses, it 



"The thorn-locust tree at the foot of the garden." 

 (See page 578.) 



is folly to plant them about everywhere, so that the labor 

 of caring for them overbalances the pleasure of seeing 

 them. More formally grown they are more easily studied. 



