EVERY GARDEN MEADES <A HOME 
A S WE ENTER the new year, and are looking forward 
/\ to the spring activities outdoors, it may be worth 
while to pause a while and look backward for com- 
/ % parisons. And what do we see? In the readjust- 
^ ment of affairs that is going on people have been 
making new homes in the country and suburbs, many old places 
that have stood vacant for years have been reoccupied by new 
people. There has been a great shifting of population, and the 
end is not yet. 
Already the influence of this commotion has had its reaction on 
the nurseryman. An unprecedented activity in planting and gar- 
den construction work has been felt, and but for the phenomen- 
ally “open” fall weather there must have been an accumulated 
congestion to strangle spring movements. The making of 
gardens about the new homes that was so active in the fall will 
be even more active as spring opens, for very many people still 
defer their planting to the beginning of the year. Activity in 
fall work that the nurseryman has experienced indicates a 
corresponding volume of activity for the seedsman in spring. 
The home owner, too, approaches the matter with a new 
appreciation of the garden and its meaning. Garden Clubs, 
which almost ceased to function as such during the war period, 
have returned to their normal course and find much work 
to be accomplished. The individual members are busy in 
making up for the time lost during the recent years and the 
new year opens with an activity, sane and sound, that justifies 
the feeling that 1921 will see the greatest increase of soil pro- 
duction and decorative gardening interest that the country 
has ever experienced. 
F LOWER-PAINTINGS that look like flowers are rare 
indeed. Every student of every art school “paints 
flowers” to his or her satisfaction, but in fact misses the mark 
by an infinite distance. Instead of getting a flower portrait 
we get a splotch of color that may bear some relation to the tint 
of the original but lacks form, detail, texture, life, and person- 
ality to such a degree that it is a composite expression of a gene- 
ral impression rather than a portrait of an individual. Fact is, 
such a painter does not know of what he paints and produces 
a more or less pleasing pattern of color effects based on nature’s 
models, but never a flower portrait that a gardener can recog- 
nize. 
Come we now to one, however, who transcends in floral 
accuracy while yet not shedding one degree of art value. 
The American public, or at any rate that portion of it which 
loves flowers and appreciates fine art, owes much to those en- 
thusiastic citizens pledged to the service of horticulture as 
“The Garden Club of America” at whose urgent invitation 
Mr. Frank Galsworthy, deserting his own garden in England, has 
come to linger for a while — and to paint — in ours! 
Those of us fortunate enough to have seen the first exhibition 
of his paintings at the Anderson Galleries are glad to learn that 
this privilege is to be extended toother cities besides New York, 
and it is to be hoped that no one appreciative of fine floral 
portraiture who is within walking, motoring, or railroad dis- 
tance of the chosen cities will miss this rare opportunity to see 
flower paintings that really portray flowers. Mr. Galsworthy 
has a genuine affection for flowers and a thorough knowledge 
of them as a cultivator; to him a Tulip is not merely a Tulip 
it is a Rembrandt, a Darwin, with individual charms and eccen- 
tricities of actual varieties keenly noted and cherished. Dom 
Pedro and Mahoney lose their Doctor Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde- 
like character under such trained observation. Then in addi- 
tion he has in superlative degree the all too infrequent faculty 
of portraying both truthfully and artistically the blossoms he 
knows and loves. 
There are good horticulturists — quite a number of them here 
and there all told; there are artists — reasonably good ones — in 
even greater number; but the horticulturist who deserves the 
title of artist, or the artist who may justly also be called a gar- 
dener is an unusual, almost a unique “find!” Again thanks to 
The Garden Club of America for its perspicacity! We have 
Mr. Galsworthy; let us enjoy him, and learn from him. 
For learn we can — and much. Take for example the exceed- 
ingly simple sketches of the Narcissus family; perhaps no one 
who has not himself tried to paint can fully realize the mastery 
of medium and material which lies beneath that surface sim- 
plicity. A few strokes made, a few tones used — but just the 
right ones. To imprison on a sheet of paper the living sinu- 
osity of the Narcissus leaf with one sweep of the brush is the trick 
of a practised hand; this Mr. Galsworthy does and does repeatedly 
in his. four score or more sketches of varieties of Narcissus. 
These sketches, quite aside from their artistic value, have special 
interest for the gardener including as they do a number of 
varieties seldom — and some never — seen in this country. One 
variety, very convincingly portrayed by Mr. Galsworthy, 
rather startlingly displays a reddish tinge in the rays of its 
perianth, a suggestive first step, perhaps, toward that fan- 
tastic dream — the red Daffodil. Its name is Red Guard 
Barrii. 
The Flora Medal was last year awarded by the Royal Horti- 
cultural Society for these and similar sketches of the Tulip and 
other flowers, thus setting the official seal of approval upon Mr. 
Galsworthy’s work in this field by a group of qualified experts. 
Wandering among the pictures proper the conviction grows 
apace of the artist’s oneness with nature, his understanding 
of her spirit and her daring. How else could he have ventured 
upon (what for lack of a more accurate word may be called) 
color schemes that hold neither contrasts nor harmonies but 
are simply fragments of juxtaposed color, to all appearance 
without “malice aforethought,” random blooms running riot 
as they sometimes do in our gardens if we let mother nature 
get a stride or two ahead. The group of “ Perennial Phloxes,” 
sweeping the gamut of reds from magenta through crimson- 
scarlet to salmon, is a conspicuous example of his fearless hand- 
ling of difficult and unusual color problems. 
