3 12 
Old Time Gardens 
There is a line of Poppy colors which is most 
entrancing ; the gray, smoke color, lavender, mauve, 
and lilac Poppies, edged often and freaked with tints 
of red, are rarely beautiful things. There are fine 
white Poppies, some fringed, some single, some 
double — the Bride is the appropriate name of the 
fairest. And the pinks of Poppies, that wonderful 
red-pink, and a shell-pink that is almost salmon, and 
the sunset pinks of our modern Shirley Poppies, 
with quality like finest silken gauze ! The story of 
the Shirley Poppies is one of magic, that a flower- 
loving clergyman who in 1882 sowed the seed of 
one specially beautiful Poppy which had no black 
in it, and then sowed those of its fine successors, 
produced thus a variety which has supplied the world 
with beauty. Rev. Mr. Wilks, their raiser, gives 
these simply worded rules anent his Shirley Pop- 
pies : — 
“ 1, They are single; 2, always have a white base; 
3, with yellow or white stamens, anthers, or pollen ; 4, and 
never have the smallest particle of black about them.” 
The thought of these successful and beautiful 
Poppies is very stimulating to flower raisers of mod- 
erate means, with no profound knowledge of flowers ; 
it shows what can be done by enthusiasm and appli- 
cation 'and patience. It gives something of the same 
comfort found in Keats’s fine lines to the singing 
thrush : — 
“ Oh ! fret not after knowledge. 
I have none, and yet the evening listens . 9 9 
