[Synopsis of preceding chapters: Roseberry Gardens is the name of a nursery of the old type, with azaleas, magnolias, etc., in profusion. The owner, Mr, Worthington, is a stately, scholarly 
gentleman of the old school, yet an advanced thinker, a plant lover always anxious to succeed with new introductions. Rudolph Trommel, the foreman, a Swiss, grows plants rather because he loves 
them than from any business instinct, and indeed takes exception to Michael’s having sold a certain plant because it was such a fine specimen. He also is a shrewd judge of human nature. Among 
the customers is Maurice J. Herford, a dilletante admirer of plants, an artist. Roberta Davenant is secretary to Mr. Worthington and the protege of old Rudolph Trommel, through whose intro- 
duction she procured the position and who is constantly instructing her in garden craft and plant* knowledge. From time to time Michael so arranges things that Roberta has to act as guide and 
saleswoman to Maurice Herford. Roberta is self reliant, unconventional and somewhat jolts the old time residents of the place. Paul Fielding, a landscape student and relative of Major Pomerane. 
a resident, is another visitor to the Nursery. He would go horseback riding with Roberta in the early mornings, to the secret delight of the Major, who twits his cousin with remarks concerning 
Roberta’s interest in the plants of the Nursery and of Maurice’s interest in those same plants! One August day Michael suggests teaching Roberta how to bud and incidentally talks about the 
popular use of a few of the commonest hedge plants to the neglect of others better but less used. Settling down to the work of budding, Michael becomes reminiscent and tells of how a year ago 
Mr. Herford came, suggesting he go with him to Europe. The lesson in budding progresses. Paul Fielding, discouraged by Roberta’s indifference, receives advice from his cousin. Major Pomerane. 
Paul visits Roseberry Gardens the following morning and to his delight is asked by Roberta to help her in making an inventory of the plants in the nursery.] 
I DON’T see them quite like that, but I love to 
think places for them. I’d like to see those 
flowering apples over in the next section — the ones 
Michael and I budded — used on a terrace, clipped 
into the form of standard roses — I think it would be 
good. Those others I would have planted beside 
a stone wall with the poet’s narcissus for company. 
“This is a nursery, you know, a sure-enough nur- 
sery, and these little plants that you find new and 
uninteresting are just babies that haven’t yet gone 
out to make their way in the world. But these are 
very important years, I assure you; here they get 
their character, their impress. Sometimes I feel as 
if it were a little like an orphan asylum and we 
could only hope for the best in the treatment the 
little things will have when they leave. It’s ap- 
palling the rough way some worthy people will 
stick plants in the ground or else leave them 
about unplanted. Michael had to go last week to 
see what was wrong with a tree that the man who 
bought it said he couldn’t make grow, and what do 
you think Michael found?” She laughed. 
“ Can’t guess,” said Fielding. 
“He found the man sitting beside the tree, in his 
back-yard, the soil scooped away from half the roots 
so that he could watch it better. I believe he spent 
hours every day in that manner.” 
Paul Fielding laughed. When one is five and 
twenty and the world going pleasantly, one laughs 
easily. 
“Were you ever South?” he asked abruptly. 
“No,” she answered, “never. But my father 
used to tell me about it. He thought it wonderful, 
but he never took me there. And I know about 
your big camellias at Paradise Park that Mr. Worth- 
ington says would fill the office, each one.” 
“There are only four as large as that,” said Field- 
ing, “and those stand one at each comer where the 
rose garden used to be. Those were brought from 
Japan in 1750, but there are oceans of little ones; 
they grow up thick in the grass just under the big 
camellias. There’s an avenue of live-oaks as old or 
older than the camellias, great old giants whose tops 
meet overhead; the avenue must be a hundred feet 
wide, and I know it’s a quartet of a mile long. That’s 
one approach. The other is from the river. It 
winds in and out between the marshes, like that 
little creek winds below, only it’s much larger — it’s a 
river. And the oaks, not slim little things like you 
have in your woods but big enough to make a dozen 
lindens such as this one we’re under. You could 
build a country house in the branches; they come 
down to the edge of the marshes and fringe the river. 
There’s a spidery-looking wharf that comes out into 
the water — a sort of centipede affair with the piles 
for legs. That’s where we land when we come up 
by boat. The house isn’t far from the river, and you 
catch the scent of the honeysuckles almost as soon 
as you land. There are big live oaks about the 
house and at night they cast queer strange shadows. 
We have wonderful moonlight down there. The old 
house is quiet and brooding; it has been through a 
good deal and feels like it wasn’t sure that happiness 
had come to it yet. I know what would bring it! 
It’s a wonderful thing to bring happiness to a place. 
Cousin Jim says that’s what your mother did for the 
Davenant house; he says it’s never been the same 
place since.” 
Roberta was silent a moment. Then she said, 
“Tell me more about your Paradise Park.” 
“There’s little to tell,” said Fielding. “It’s run 
down, going to pieces, but I love every inch of the 
blessed old place. It’s like seeing some one you 
care for in misfortune. I want, more than I want 
anything else, except one thing, to see prosperity 
come back to it. Along the marshes, up and down 
beside the river, are what used to be rice-fields. 
Rice has been grown successfully there; there’s no 
reasons why it couldn’t be again. I wanted to try 
it, but my father was so anxious that I shouldn’t 
settle down there at Paradise Park without seeing 
something else that I came North to have a try at 
landscape gardening. But I reckon there isn’t any- 
thing better if you looked from the Gulf to Canada. 
There’s an old race track where my great-grand- 
father used to train his horse — we have some right 
good horses there yet. You ought to see a colt I have! 
I believe there’s phosphate in the land — there’s 
some at Ashley place just above — but we’d have 
to sell some land for that and lose some of the big 
live oaks. I'd rather rebuild the broken dyke and 
grow — go to rice-growing. I want, more than I want 
anything, as I told you, to see prosperity come back 
and happiness to the old place.” 
“Then,” said Roberta, “why not do it yourself* 
and bring it back? It would be interesting. You 
might dig up those oceans of little camellias and pot 
them and sell them to Unde Rudolph for stocks. 
What are they? The single red — Japonicas?” 
“Yes, that’s what they are?” 
“ It would be very simple to do, and wouldn’t hurt 
the plants in the least! They ought to be pleased — 
those big camellias — to have their great-grand- 
children travel.” 
“ I suppose I might do that,” said Fielding slowly. 
“ I never thought of it.” 
“Surely you could. And you could cut azalea 
branches and send great hampers of them to town 
for sale. If you cut where you would wish to prune, 
the plants wouldn’t be hurt. And you could raise 
thousands of box-cuttings — while you’re mending 
the dykes and waiting for the rice plantations.” 
“How did you think of that?” said Paul Fielding. 
“Commercial mind,” answered Roberta. “I 
reckon I must be catching one from Michael. Any- 
way, it’s better than cutting down your live oaks.” 
Chapter XVII 
In September. Mr. Horace Worthington returned. 
The old gentleman had been summering in the 
mountains, watching the coming and going of the 
summer folk, interested in a detached way as if the 
life were a play and his shady piazza-comer a box at 
the theatre. For the rest, the folk with whom he 
really kept company were Doctor Johnson and Bos- 
well and Plato and Sir Thomas Browne, and he 
looked at the trees with the eye of a connoisseur and 
dreamed about his new hedge-plant and a method 
of growing magnolias which should make transplant- 
ing as safe, as if the little trees were in pots. 
On his first morning at the gardens, just as a de- 
voted mother after a brief absence must first see her 
babies, so Mr. Horace Worthington went first to 
the “little houses” where were the baby seedlings in 
benches — azaleas only two or three inches tall, baby 
evergreens, Taxus, and Abies, and Picea, all carefully 
ranged like tiny soldiers, though it might be eighteen 
or twenty years before they were doing their work. 
Whoever grows trees lives in the future, builds for 
the future, and must put aside haste and impatience 
as foolishness. Which is why so many statesmen 
have been notable tree planters; they are able to 
look ahead and to build for posterity. 
“That little thing!” said the impatient, hurrying 
folk, “it will be years before it will look like any- 
thing! I must have something that will show now 
— something for immediate effect.” So he plants 
his annuals; and the trees that would make his little 
place a home remain unplanted, and in winter his 
garden is bare and in early spring there is no bud- 
ding and blooming to hearten him with the first 
breath of new-coming life. 
So now the old gentleman bent tenderly over the 
tiny trees whose growth he could not possibly hope 
to see, the diminutive Taxus seedlings carried his 
mind to the forbears, the great hedges of England, 
two or three centuries old. “Such a pity,” he mur- 
mured, “that our climate is so difficult for them.” 
Then his face lighted and he went to the next house 
to see his idol, the hedge plant of the future, the new 
Ilex crenata, the Japanese holly. 
Rudolph Trommel was in the ilex house and the 
two old men, one the scholar and poet, the other 
scientist and workman bent together over the 
branches filled with the tiny leaved bronze green 
cuttings with the devotion of parents bending over 
the crib of a new baby. 
“One hundred thousand, we haf,” said Rudolph 
Trommel, patting his broad chest. 
“It is the hedge plant of the future,” said Horace 
Worthington, glowingly. “It will be in America 
what the British yew is in England, but even more! 
The leaves are finer, neater. It has uniformity with- 
out monotony. Denseness with lights and shadows. 
It will give protection such as no other plant affords. 
Think what that hedge would be in a rose garden! 
A background of precisely the right shade and den- 
sity. A hemlock hedge is sombre; this would give 
a wall of green without the sombreness. It will 
mean the revival of topiary work! People may even 
become genuinely, intelligently interested in gardens, 
in horticulture! Can you not see it, Trommel?” 
( To be continued) 
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