CHILDREN’S NUMBER 
BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
Series II Brooklyn, N. Y., April 8, 1914 Number 2 
THE WILD FLOWER GARDEN 
Just the mere thought of a wild flower garden is a joy. All 
boys and girls would like a bit of Nature’s garden in their back- 
yards. The flowers in such a garden are the wild ones. All wild 
things are hard to tame and wild flowers are no exception. So 
the problem is one of conquest. 
Flowers are like people in that they must be made comfortable 
if they are to do their best. So you must think of ways to make 
flowers very much at home, if you expect them to be content and 
to blossom when taken up out of the woods and brought home to 
your own backyard. A wild flower garden is the hardest kind of 
a garden to have, and because of this it is well worth trying for. 
If you are planning for such a garden, the very first thing to 
do is this: go out into your yard and choose the garden spot. If 
possible, this should be on the north side of the house, a sheltered, 
shady spot. The wild flowers in the woods are living under con- 
ditions of half light or scattered light. The sun comes peeping 
into the woods through many trees and thick foliage. This sort 
of lighting is what we call diffused lighting. So do not plan to 
place your wild flower garden right out in glaring sunlight if you 
can avoid it. The north side of the house receives fewer numbers 
of hours of sunshine than the other sides. If there is a little 
