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MY EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING A GARDEN HOME. 



running riot, and only the constant use of the pruning 

 shears can keep them within bounds. California seems 

 to be the natural home of the geranium, as well as of 

 the calla lily ; and if the slips could be planted that are 

 thrown away here every year, there would be enough to 

 furnish plants for every home in the country. 



Heliotrope, with its fragrance so intoxicating, and the 

 starry marguerites, are so full of bloom that one can hard- 

 ly help believing that they are conscious of their beauty, 

 and are trying to show off a little. A wire trellis is com- 

 pletely hidden by the vigorous growth of a passion vine, 

 with its grand mystic flowers. In a shadowy angle of 

 the house is a fuchsia, with whose beauty one never be- 

 comes too familiar, for it always impresses one with a 

 sense of strangeness, as though it might have strayed 

 from Paradise ; and at its feet some dear little pansies 



raise their soft eyes in silent adoration. Two abutilons, 

 one red and one white, shake their graceful bells in each 

 passing breeze. A lemon tree or a hedge of limes is 

 both useful and beautiful. A bush or two of guavas or 

 a loquat tree are also useful adjuncts to a garden, and 

 can easily be raised ; or a strawberry bed in one corner 

 of the lot will furnish fruit for the table throughout the 

 year. The soil and climate seem adapted to almost all 

 kinds of fruit and flowers, and the tired man thanks the 

 lucky fate that placed him in such a delightful land, 

 where, while the wintry winds are howling and the 

 snow flakes are falling on his less favored brothers, he 

 can rest his weary feet amid scenes of Eden-like beauty, 

 or wander hand in hand with his modern Eve "in the 

 cool of the day." 



Los Angeles Co., California. E. A. Lawrence. 



MY EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING A GARDEN HOME. 



AM a Methodist traveling 

 preacher, who, my lungs 

 being affected, am trying 

 to fit up a home for my 

 remaining years. This 

 means the building of a 

 dwelling with all its ap- 

 purtenances, grounds, 

 garden and orchard, with 

 the exception of twenty- 

 nine very fine large apple 

 trees, one crab apple and 

 one peach tree. It is just three years since I com- 

 menced this home building, and six months since I 

 gave up a charge. 



From boyhood I have been passionately fond of flow- 

 ers, and have always had the parsonage yards as full as 

 possible of them. Besides, ornithology has been a favor- 

 ite pursuit, and now in the country (three miles from a 

 town), I am indulging my bent to the utmost. In the 

 first place I resolved to have every ornamental shrub 

 and tree that I found to be hardy in central Iowa. Nor 

 did I purpose to take anybody's dictum as to what I 

 should plant. I have known only one winter in this sec- 

 tion when the the thermometer did not go to 20° below 

 zero. Last winter was no exception. Three years 

 would therefore settle the hardiness of a plant. Those 

 I shall mention I believe to be as hardy as a clump of 

 hazel. 



Six kinds of spirasa have grown from the tip ends. If 

 there is a prettier plant for the lawn, during its season, 

 than the Van Houttei, I have never seen it. The horse- 

 chestnut in two varieties, red and white, is now making 

 a pleasant show of foliage, and so is the white fringe. 

 The purple fringe does not seem so hardy. 



One deutzia only, of half a dozen tried, commends it- 

 self ; it will soon be full of white flower spikes. It is a 



crenata. This, the first week in June, is giving us about 

 a dozen varieties of paeonies, while the platycodon and a 

 fraxinella, growing in good-sized clumps, are regarded 

 by everybody as beautiful, as they are rare in this county. 

 Mine are the only ones in these parts, I believe. The 

 white and pink astilbes will soon be in flower ; the pink 

 is excellent beyond description. 



By the stump of a Cottonwood tree is a lot of thrifty 

 perennial peas that seem bent, with a little assistance, 

 to cover it over. There are quite a large number of 

 roses — hybrid perpetuals — just on the point of opening. 

 The June-bug is hard on roses, and I found, this morn- 

 ing a long (2 inches) green worm feeding on the flower- 

 buds. Eternal vigilance is the price of flowers. I intend 

 — God willing — to have roses if I have to kill every bug 

 and worm in the garden. There are also six varieties of 

 lilies I know to be hardy. They are all exhibiting their 

 buds for blowing ; viz, auratum, candidum, a white long- 

 iflorum, a reddish one whose flowers stand straight up, 

 single and double tiger lilies, and a spotted variety, very 

 handsome and exceptionally hardy. Early in the spring 

 there was a beautiful show of tulips, hyacinths, nar- 

 cissus, snowdrops and crocuses, all of which multiply 

 wonderfully. 



There are three varieties of lilac and two of syringa, 

 and the omnipresent snowball. The calycanthus and 

 Hydrangea grandijlora grow luxuriantly, and the latter 

 flowers to perfection. The pride of the matron, how- 

 ever, in early spring, is a delightful looking African 

 tamarix. It is a wonder to everybody who sees it. The 

 weigelias, two varieties, are regarded as ornaments by 

 the passers-by, who, in their time of flowering, declare 

 them to be the "finest things in the door-yard." The 

 Yucca Jilatnetttosa is almost a native. There is an inter- 

 esting variety of it near the pond in the edge of the 

 grove. Two varieties of shrub honeysuckle are close to 

 the front fence, together with a bunch of privet. I am 

 training two sorts of climbing honeysuckles now in 



