Old-Fashioned Flowers 
from her standpoint—but she often 
said that she could not help liking 
them, and whenever I come across 
any of them, now-a-days, I always 
feel like giving them a friendly hand 
in greeting. Like the candlestick lily, 
they were inclined to straggle all over 
the garden, and on this account were 
often turned into the roadside; but 
this never seemed to make the least 
difference with them. I hey kept on 
growing—and spreading— as if noth¬ 
ing had happened to them, and were 
just as jolly and happy there as 
anywhere. 
The Tiger Lily, tawny, black-spot¬ 
ted, and stately, well deserves a place 
in our modern gardens. So does the 
clove pink with its cushion of gray- 
green foliage, above which it lifts its 
scores of flowers of pearly flesh-color 
marked with maroon, all through 
June and July. It is one of the 
sweetest of all flowers, is perfectly 
hardy, and because of its low, com¬ 
pact habit it is excellent for edging 
beds or for front places in the border. 
Suppose you give some of these 
old-fashioned flowers a chance to 
prove their merit to you, this year. 
If you do, I know what the result 
will be—they will become permanent 
dwellers in your garden, for their sim¬ 
ple, unassuming beauty will win 
your friendship—and keep it ! 
In many gardens the old Lilac is 
not seen to-day. “It spread so that 
it became a nuisance,” they tell us. 
“Pretty?—yes, that is true, but it 
was so old-fashioned.” What of that ? Beauty 
never gets stale. Merit ought never to be subjected 
to the caprices of a whim for “something new.” And 
if there is one shrub in all tbe list that has more genuine 
merit than the lilac, pray tell me what its name is! 
It is as hardy as it is possible for a shrub to be, it 
blooms with such profusion, year after year, that a 
bush of it is a flower-show in itself, and as for sweet¬ 
THE FRAGRANT LILAC 
ness, is there anything except the rose and the 
carnation that excels it ? I he objection urged 
against its spreading habit amounts to very little, 
for tbe use of the hoe, a few minutes at a time, 
through its growing season, will keep down every 
sucker easily. If I could have but one shrub, that 
shrub should be tbe lilac, the most charming and 
exhilarating of the spring time visitors. 
9 1 
