a68 
Old Time Gardens 
ner, its most valuable color giver. Self-sown, this 
Larkspur sprung up freely every year ; needing no 
special cherishing or nourishing, it grew apace, and 
bloomed with a luxuriance and length of flowering 
that cheerfully blued the garden for the whole sum- 
mer. It was a favorite of children in their floral 
games, and pretty in the housewife’s vases, but its 
chief hold on favor was in its democracy and 
endurance. Other flowers drew admirers and lost 
them ; some grew very ugly in their decay ; certain 
choice seedlings often had stunted development, gar- 
den scourges attacked tender beauties; fierce July 
suns dried up the whole border, all save the Lark- 
spur, which neither withered nor decayed ; and 
often, unaided, saved the midsummer garden from 
scanty unkemptness and dire disrepute. 
The graceful line of Dr. Holmes, “ light as a 
loop of Larkspur,” always comes to my mind as I 
look at a bed of Larkspur ; and I am glad to show 
here a a loop of Larkspur,” growing by the great 
boulder which he loved in the grounds of his coun- 
try home at Beverly Farms. I liked to fancy that 
Dr. Holmes’s expression was written by him from 
his memory of the little wreaths and garlands of 
pressed Larkspur that have been made so univer- 
sally for over a century by New England children. 
But that careful flower observer, Mrs. Wright, notes 
that in a profuse growth of the Bee Larkspur,, the 
strong flower spikes often are in complete loops be- 
fore full expansion into a straight spire ; some are 
looped thrice. Dr. Holmes was a minute observer of 
floral characteristics, as is shown in his poem on the 
