4 6 
Old Time Gardens 
often towering above our heads and forming great 
candelabra bearing two score or more blooms. It is 
no easy task to secure their deep-rooted rhizomes in 
the meadow. I know a young man who won his 
sweetheart by the patience and assiduity with which 
he dug for her all one broiling morning to secure 
for her the coveted Lily roots, and collapsed with 
mild sunstroke at the finish. Her gratitude and 
remorse were equal factors in his favor. 
The Tiger Lily is usually thought upon as a truly 
old-fashioned flower, a veritable antique; it is a 
favorite of artists to place as an accessory in their 
colonial gardens, and of authors for their flower- 
beds of Revolutionary days, but it was not known 
either in formal garden or front yard, until after 
“the days when we lived under the King.” The 
bulbs were first brought to England from Eastern 
Asia in 1804 by Captain Kirkpatrick of the East 
India Company’s Service, and shared with the Japan 
Lily the honor of being the first Eastern Lilies in- 
troduced into European gardens. A few years ago 
an old gentleman, Mr. Isaac Pitman, who was then 
about eighty-five years of age, told me that he re- 
called distinctly when Tiger Lilies first appeared in 
our gardens, and where he first saw them growing 
in Boston. So instead of being an old-time flower, 
or even an old-comer from the Orient, it is one of 
the novelties of this century. How readily has it 
made itself at home, and even wandered wild down 
our roadsides ! 
The two simple colors of Phlox of the old-time 
front yard, white and crimson-purple, are now aug- 
