68^ 



BUDS. BLOSSOMS, FRUITS. 



The display of fruits in the rear curtains of the Horti- 

 cultural building will be immense, and will embrace the 

 cultivated fruits of the whole world. The wine and 

 raisin exhibit will also probably be immense. Thirty- 

 three foreign countries have applied for space for the 

 display of wines. 



The Two Gardens. — The artist has admirably touched 

 off in the two pictures presented on this page and the next 

 the difference between the artificial and the natural in 

 landscape-art. It will hardly be necessary to say that 

 the true object of a garden is to secure homefulness. 

 What a contrast between the carpet-beds, carpentry and 

 masonry in one picture and the clustered joys in the 

 other ! Our mothers made their vegetable and flower- 

 gardens to coincide ; that is. they saw the beauty there 

 was in cabbage and carraway as well as in roses and 

 nasturtiums. The children were expected not only 



or a suit of clothes, is to be used. The grandest flowers 

 anybody ever grew were children. Any one who grows 

 roses and does not grow his own children is a blunderer. 

 But I have seen people fussing away at thejr flowers, 

 while their children were sent off to be trained by others. 

 Won't you sit down and read and feel the contrast be- 

 tween these two pictures ? The darlings, with their flow- 

 ers and teacups are going to make real motherly crea- 

 tures, aud nice wives by and by. In the other picture, 

 you have incipient aristocrats on the road to degenera- 

 tion. Of course, the artist gives us extreme cases, but 

 do not fail to understand that midway there are thou- 

 sands who are doing very silly work in gardening. The 

 hint is here : just develop what nature suggests, and you 

 will have a true garden. 



Many people seem to consider gardening a strange and 

 mysterious process. They buy books on landscape gar- 



A Natural 



to help weed but to help enjoy such gardens. But 

 you see the difference. In our fancy French garden a 

 hired nurse leads the children about, while the wife (not 

 mother) leads a dog. I have studied the bulbs in the 

 other picture, and am not quite sure whether they are 

 onions or gladioluses. But what a capital idea to make 

 a table of one of our 40-pound cabbages! Still there 

 are hosts of people who covet these artificial gardens, 

 with stone walls, and vases, and red and yellow ribbons. 



I suppose the idea the artist intends to convey is this : 

 Your grounds, like your house, should grow out of your 

 own soul. You should grow a house and its accompani- 

 ments as a crab grows its shell. It should express you ; 

 it should tell what you are, what you think, what you 

 feel, what you love. You should not make it all at once ; 

 above all, not let somebody else come and make it for 

 you. Let it grow as you grow. A garden, like a body 



Garden. 



dening, and make a great study of it ; or they write for 

 information about trees and shrubs, and walks and arbors 

 and plats, to some old gardener who is too busy to be 

 bothered in this way. I get, perhaps, twenty such letters 

 a year, and the answer to each one is just the same : Cut 

 your cloth to your person. Look at your land, and see 

 what its general contour is. Don't try to make it over ; 

 just take advantage of what you have. Don't cut down 

 everything, grade off knolls, spoil every pretty variation 

 you have, and then set a lot of trees that will need thirty 

 years to make them of any account. Just let nature tell 

 you how she likes things, and you go in as under steward 

 to help her. — E. P. Powell. 



Hellebores or Christmas Rose. — The pure and 

 beautiful flowers of the Christmas rose have, perhaps, no 

 equal in their season. There are several good varieties 

 of Helleborus niger, but best of all is certainly the one 



