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of the owners—cosily set in beds bordered with blue-grass; and, on the other, go 
over those wide areas which public-spirited citizens* have laid out and enriched 
with every description of plant,—serving as popular Flower-Schools. 
Visit those vast “Botanical Gardens” under municipal or national auspices 
—nor omitting to recall the “paradises” and Pensile Gardens of the Orient—or 
some'complete Vegetable Kingdom in miniature, where, with every cunning con¬ 
trivance of landscape-gardening—winding walks and drives, serpentine rills flow¬ 
ing at stations beneath rustic bridges, gushing fountains, splashing waterfalls, 
placid lakes with graceful islets and inviting boats, shady alleys, protecting 
hedges, rocky caves, clambering vines, grassy hillocks rising above pebbly paths,— 
umbrageous, rustling branches sway, high or low, in convenient juxtaposition to 
clusters of flowers of every kind, and proportionate heights, like diminutive sier¬ 
ras, appear to saw the horizon of the beautiful site. Find your way into those 
grand seed-plots, and nurseries, such as Nice’s famous “Park of Boses,” into those 
well-supplied conservatories in which are also sheltered rare exotics from highly 
favored lands; and enter once more those domestic greenhouses on large or small 
scale, where flower, and delicate shrub and tuber, have been tenderly rescued and 
shielded from the dismantling desolation of inimical elements; and again you 
will clearly perceive how busy is man not only in caring for his pets—every living 
germ—but also in judiciously adjusting and displaying flower and plant to dif¬ 
ferent ends and uses. 
To these must be added the “Winter-Gardens,” either pretentious or un¬ 
pretending, in which, when thrifty domestic tastes can no longer be gratified by 
the smiling aspect of front or back garden, the blithe, frail creatures of late 
spring, constant summer, or early autumn, are considerately introduced into the 
warm household, to be ranged in bright nook and corner and passage-way, or to 
be set in the casements, or to be grouped in apartments all to themselves—it may 
be in dining-rooms—there to continue, at will, their softly breathing lives! It is 
a happy adaptation; for thus balmy spring, genial summer, and pathetic autmun, 
are in some w r ay made to linger within doors, while the chilling touch of the later 
fall already menaces, or the dreary, sullen winter reigns—then boisterously roars 
—without. 
Patriotism, no less than religion, which prompts and directs it, has been 
honored and dignified in the allotment and assignment of flower-uses. As in¬ 
stances take the “National Flowers,” or the choice of certain familiar flowers or 
♦Instance the late Alexander Mitchell, of Milwaukee, Wis., and especially, the late 
Henry Shaw, of St. Louis, Mo., who owned what was ranked the largest private garden in the 
world, prior to his generous transfer of it to that city, for unreserved.common enjoyment. 
