130 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
out its side branches. You must be up 
and doing, for it is a rapid grower, it 
stays awake nights to grow. But a dain¬ 
tier, cleaner, more satisfactory vine, I 
have never found. 
A beautiful, hardy, flowering border 
that is very effective along a fence, is the 
hardy Verbena, purple, it will grow al¬ 
most two feet high. A neighbor has 
one on three sides of a town lot— it is 
a surprise and a delight to all who behold 
it, a mass of soft purple splendor, it 
reveals the value of flowers in a great 
mass. 
There are wonderful possibilities for 
Florida, I can only hint at them, and 
give a bit of cheer and experience from 
my own little corner in Putnam county, 
and urge you to plant things that will 
also be a joy^ to others after we have 
passed away. 
That brings me to the Village Improve¬ 
ment work. This work for a higher life 
for our village, for tree planting and the 
making of good roads, is one where men 
and women must work together. It is 
certainly the mother’s anxious concern 
that her town, her county, her State be 
clean and up-to-date as well as her home, 
for in them she must continue the educa¬ 
tion of her boys and girls. It is the 
environment of the young that makes us 
have men and women with proper ideals 
of civic pride, and of partiotism. Moth¬ 
ers know instinctively how important it 
is to give children the right appreciation 
of beauty and cleanliness. When our 
boys and girls get the right education 
in Florida, our towns will be too nice for 
hogs and cattle to run in and not until 
then. But mothers sometimes fail. You 
can find this out by getting an ordinary 
man to clean up a bit of road-way. You 
will most likely find his idea of “cleaning 
up” means to “dig up” everything living 
in sight, leaving a nice, clean bed of sand, 
without the slightest idea of the use for 
which the cleaning was made. We don’t 
expect all men to see beauty, any more 
than we expect all women to sing, but we 
do ask, if you find a beautiful, young tree 
or Palmetto, that can remain in the 
clearing, just as well as not; please let 
it stay. ' In this village improvement 
work, we deal with matters of fact, not 
of opinion, so there is only the common 
inertia of humanity to overcome, and it 
is enough. Our study of how to get the 
most out of what we have, and for the 
comfort and happiness of all, has brought 
the Christ spirit much closer to us, in our 
homes and in our public work, for work¬ 
ing with Nature, not against her, we are 
one with the birds and the trees, and we 
become as little children, simple and trust¬ 
ful. Surely Chas. Wagner would love 
Florida, for one soon learns here the 
“Simple Life.” and cannot worry long if 
he tries. 
As woman is the maker of the home 
“atmosphere,” and man the strength, the 
foundation of the structure let us make 
the most of these great forces, that the 
environment may be the most perfect for 
the proper development of our children. 
Not stopping at the home but demanding 
and struggling for better conditions in 
our towns, our villages and our State. 
Give me a man whose mother has 
taught him to love the birds, the trees, 
the beauties of nature, he is the man for 
road commissioner, for park work, he 
can see and save what nature has given 
us so lavishly on every side. But with¬ 
out the right environment and the ear¬ 
nest love implanted in the child-heart, our 
efforts will be slow and faltering. ^ 
Joy is in my heart when I read of 
