The Garden Magazine, November, 1923 
155 
makes it difficult to grow certain 
sand-loving plants, and the long 
hot season militates against 
success with Peonies, Tulips, 
Lilies-of-the-Valley, and other 
plants which need the stimulus 
of frost. 
Old residents of New Orleans 
still recount the glories of the 
Carrollton Gardens which flour¬ 
ished thirty-odd years ago, laud¬ 
ing the rare plants and shrubs, 
beautiful winding paths, and 
flowered nooks, where the elite 
of the city used to stroll. Here 
it was that Lafcadio Hearn, 
that erratically brilliant literary 
genius, who afterward became a 
Japanese citizen, spent much 
time during his eight-year so¬ 
journ in New Orleans. These 
gardens beautified the city for 
many years and it was a genuine 
civic loss when the river en¬ 
croached on the land, where the 
gardens were located on a bend, 
and five or six blocks succumbed 
to the surging current. 
B UT fascinating as is the air 
of quaint beauty that 
hangs about the gardens of New 
Orleans, there is also an active 
and quite modern factor at work 
upon them. That is the New 
Orleans Garden Society. 
Women are the active spirits 
in most garden societies, but the 
proverbial exception is worth 
studying. The New Orleans 
Garden Society has a large mas¬ 
culine contingent and believes 
that it owes them, especially its 
scientific and professional mem¬ 
bers, much of its distinction and 
many of its achievements. It 
has distinguished botanists and 
entomologists; landscape archi¬ 
tects and horticulturists, and 
men whose hobbies are gardens, 
plants, and hybridization. In 
fact, the number of these ex¬ 
perts is so large and the Society 
owes them so much that it 
refused to give them up even 
to join the Garden Club of 
America. 
The New Orleans Garden 
Society boasts that it has “no 
constitution, no by-laws, no 
rules nor regulations.” It was 
established four years ago by 
Professor Reginald Somers 
Cocks, a distinguished botanist 
of Tulane University, who 
whetted the garden spirit of 
a few enthusiasts to join him 
and was its president and chief man-of-all-work until this year. 
The only requirements for admittance to membership are an 
interest in plants and gardens and the payment of small yearly 
dues. Meetings are held, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly 
IN MR. EUGENE H. ROBERTS’ GARDEN 
Awarded the Coleman E. Adler cup offered last spring for the most harmonious color effect 
in which a spreading Hackberry tree, Wisteria, and Honeysuckle (shown above) each play 
a part supplemented by a fine hedge of Duchesse de Brabant Roses, some apricot-colored 
Oleanders, masses of lavender Azalea, and Lantana; in late summer the coral of Rosa Montana 
during the fall, winter, and spring months. The rendezvous is at 
Gibson Hall, Tulane University, during the fall and winter, and 
in the spring months in the gardens of members. There are 
about three hundred members. 
