IV 
OLD-TIME FLOWERS 
T HE capricious vagaries of taste and fashion—or 
perhaps I should say, of fashionable taste—have 
not spared the garden nor the flowers that grow in it, 
although change here, to be sure, by reason of the very 
nature of the material with which the work is done, 
has not been as rapid as in many other things. Suc¬ 
cessively different flowers have ruled, however, and 
given way in time to newer favorites, even as far back 
as garden records take us. And the flower form fol¬ 
lows, in so far as it may, the form of the garden; that 
is, the form of the reigning favorite conforms to the 
taste in garden design. 
For example, the tulip, which was at the height of 
its garden popularity from the middle of the sixteenth 
century to about the end of the seventeenth, in Eng¬ 
land as well as on the Continent, enjoyed supremacy 
during the time of greatest garden stiffness and for¬ 
mality; and the tulip is a flower of imperious bearing, 
holding itself as straight as an arrow and with un- 
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