62 
April, 1920 
Slower (Brower 
My Two Gardens. 
[ Written expressly for The Flowe Grower. ] 
E ACH YEAR I make two gardens ; a 
real garden and a garden of dreams. I 
begin on my real garden just as soon as 
the brown earth flashes with the Daffodil’s 
first gold and I work in it and on it, until 
the winter’s withering winds have bitten and 
blasted the Dahlia’s last lingering bloom. 
This real garden I make with hoes and with 
hope, with perspiration and expectation, 
with muscles that strain and limbs that ache. 
It is at once a despair and a delight, a sor- 
row and an exultation. For, sometimes the 
things in it grow and sometimes they do not. 
It teases, it worries, it intrigues but always 
entertains. It has all the lure of the gaming 
table and is as fascinating as craps or poli- 
tics. For I never know what it is going to 
do. Some times the seeds come up and the 
flowers almost equal those gaudy things 
which bloom in the catalogues. Almost, for 
it is vain for a gardener to hope to equal 
those blooms which the printer makes with 
red and yellow ink. But at other times 
nothing will come up, and if it does, the cold 
gets it or the sun blights it, or it proves a 
banquet for beetles, a boarding house for 
bugs. 
But that garden of dreams! It is the gar- 
den. It is an unalloyed delight, a joy for 
ever, a sunlit sky, that knows no cloud, that 
is never hidden by a night. 
“ Why, in it 
E’en the Daisies are rose-scented. 
And the Rose herself has got 
Perfume which on earth is not.” 
In it we toil not, neither do we 
spade, yet Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like its 
borders and its beds. There all 
the seeds germinate, all the 
bulbs “climb to a soul in leaves 
and flowers.” There the suns 
never scorch and blister, the 
rains do not ruin and rend. It 
knows not the fangs of fungus 
and has not heard of rusts and 
rots. 
Its like does not exist on land 
or sea, but it grows eternally in 
the wistful hearts of all lovers 
of flowers. Its duplicate, or 
rather its archetype is found in 
some far world belonging to 
those planetary systems where, 
as astronomers and ouija boards 
tell us, multiple suns glow with 
purple and pearl, where shafts 
of crimson and gold flash in 
ever changing skies, where 
falls not “the least white star of 
snow,” where cool airs temper 
the lips of the light before they 
kiss too eagerly the flowerets’ 
tender cheeks. It is ever a-flash 
with nectared blooms and 
a-gleam with the wings of but- 
terflies, that are not born of 
worms and caterpillars which 
canker and corrode, but which 
somehow come into existence 
out of nothing, like a star which 
the creating words of a God 
speak into being. Its every 
air is musical with the song of 
birds, that sing but not eat. 
The making of this garden is 
so simple. For it is built out 
of dreams and catalogues alone. 
All spring and summer we have 
been collecting piles and piles of 
these wonderful books. We can- 
not do with one or two alone, 
but must have dozens, for does 
not each firm sell better plants 
than the other ? When the winter 
sets in and we cannot do any real 
BY T. DABNEY MARSHALL- (Mississippi.) 
work, we get out the catalogues and com- 
mence making a list of the things we just 
must have. We turn the pages lovingly. 
We linger over the super illustration, we 
read, soul-drunken, the hyper descriptions, 
and in spite of past shattering experiences 
we believe everything, even the pictures. 
Down goes this item and that. The list 
grows and grows, but in the fierce infatua- 
tion of the moment we give it small heed. 
All these wonders must be ours. We look 
out of the window to see if they are not 
already growing in our garden. At last the 
list is complete. But no ; it is not. There 
are several hundred things which we have 
omitted. We add, we insert, we supplement, 
we amend. At last the list is done. We 
look it over. We are aghast. If we get all 
the things we have down, we will have to 
acquire the next lot, and we are afraid that 
even if we had the cash to purchase it, our 
neighbor might object to moving his house 
to make room for our Roses. 
We draw a long, long sigh, for we must 
omit something. We cannot have them all. 
Some items must be eliminated. But which ? 
Which ? There is the trouble. Which ? 
Then begins an endless debate. Then in- 
deed are our heart strings strained, almost 
torn apart in the great struggle to choose 
and decide. That central round bed must 
have a Magnolia conspicua. Twenty-five 
years from now it will be a glory. It will 
prove the garden’s climax and crown. How 
its blooms will give the winter’s snows gleam 
for gleam, what nectars its waxen chalices 
hold for the hungry thirsting birds. 
But if we have it, where are we going to 
plant that tree Peony, La Lorraine, which 
will be only one in town, which shall bloom 
so profusely under our fostering care that it 
will be more potent than the ouija board to 
lure the spirits of Victor Lemoine and other 
great hybridizers back from the beyond. 
Bertrand Farr himself shall journey South- 
ward to see it and seeing, shall either die of 
envy or go out of the flower business in 
sheer despair. We reach for the final real 
true list and are about to put it down, but 
before we can do so, we hesitate, for do we 
not see in imagination the crimson fires 
which a fine Camelia Japonica shall build 
even under the freezing February sky and 
warm the winter with the summer’s splendor? 
And that trellis. It must be clasped by the 
arms of an Ipomea Coerulia Coelistis, which, 
when the weather is cloudy, all day long shall 
lift its cups of turquoise to all the wandering 
bees. But if we have it, where shall we put 
that Clematis Paniculata, which we said must 
TSUGA CANADENSIS 
(Common Hemlock or more properly Hemlock Spruce. Sometimes called Canadian Hemlock.) 
We are indebted to Horticulture, Boston, for the above illustration of a hemlock hedge. 
The common hemlock of the North Temperate Zone is an exceedingly graceful and ornamental ever- 
green which is suitable for use as a hedge, or as specimen trees or for massing. It is hardy in the far 
north and one of our most useful native evergreens. The hemlocks are not very particular to soil pro- 
viding it contains a sufficient amount of moisture steadily maintained, nor is it difficult to transplant. 
While the wood as a lumber has been in common use as a building material, it is not very desirable, 
being known as the “Devil’s Pine” ; and yet good hemlock lumber is worth a good price now and difficult 
to secure. The bark is rich in tannin and used extensively for tanning leather. 
