THE GARDEN THAT REPRODUCES THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH WILD FLOWERS NATURALLY GROW 
— VARIETIES THAT ARE ADAPTED TO VARIOUS SITUATIONS AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE ARRANGED 
by Grace Tabor 
Photographs by Ella M. Boult and Others 
RDINARILY, wild flowers do not 
make a wild garden any more 
than the swallow, alone and by 
himself, makes Summer. There 
are, indeed, many things to con¬ 
sider besides the flowers and the 
way they grow, when the pur¬ 
pose to develop a true wild gar¬ 
den furnishes inspiration. And 
there are several things which 
are commonly regarded as con¬ 
stituting such a garden that are 
really only features of it—or 
perhaps not truly even this. 
Flowers naturalized in large and 
open plantings for instance, embody one idea of wild flower 
growth, yet such naturalizing may be as far from realizing the 
true wild garden ideal as the most formal, neatly kept and prim 
design. 
For the wild garden is the nature garden, planted with Nature’s 
own unaided flower products, planted just as 
nearly as possible in the way she plants them, 
with each adapted to the conditions which she 
herself provides for it. Which is a very differ¬ 
ent thing, once you stop to consider it, from scat¬ 
tering a great number of any kind of plant be¬ 
side a path, or in the lawn, or anywhere else, to 
induce a mass growth similar to Nature’s plant¬ 
ing. Let us get this distinction quite clearly 
and keep it unconfused. 
Then, before adopting the wild garden ideal at 
all, let me urge all those who are attracted to it, 
and who do truly love the wilderness and wilder¬ 
ness effects, to be quite sure that the place where 
the garden is to be, not only admits such treat¬ 
ment, but actually invites it. The wild garden 
which is yet so tame that no wild life frisks and 
enjoys itself therein, is, after all, a pretty poor 
sort of substitute for what should be accom¬ 
plished if such a garden is undertaken at all; and the wild 
garden with a fence around it is utterly unthinkable. Of course 
there may be garden walls — indeed, there seem few places left 
in the world where gardens are made that do not demand garden 
walls all the way around them — but these walls must be absolutely 
unsuspected in the midst of the wilderness of the true wild 
garden. If there are no walls, there must of necessity be wilder¬ 
ness all about, else the garden soon succumbs to the encroach¬ 
ments of civilization. 
This does not mean, however, that a large space is necessary 
before one may aspire to have a garden such as Nature plants. 
But it does mean that there shall be space that is naturally — or 
artificially — so adapted to it that the garden’s seclusion shall be 
complete; and that its presence shall be as unsuspected from 
without, as the outer world is unsuspected from within, its con¬ 
fines. This is the first absolute essential, the one thing which 
must be inviolable. 
How to insure it is a question which each situation must have 
answered according to its particular needs and requirements. The 
trimmest of lawns, bounded by shrubbery borders, may have 
The wild flower garden should duplicate the natural conditions under which the plants 
normally grow. There is a place for the tangled roadside garden of Clematis 
( 29 ) 
