Water Gardening at a ] Minimum 
SAND'DUNES IN FRONT, MODELING CLAY IN THE REAR, AND GOOD GARDEN SOIL BOUGHT AT 
A PREMIUM BY THE SPOONFUL: IN SUCH A PLOT WAS MADE AN ALLURING GARDEN POOL 
by Elsin Grey Starr 
I N the face of the most 
discouraging conditions 
was my water garden begun. 
Behind our summer cottage 
on the lake shore lay a plot 
of sunbaked modeling clay, 
a veritable slough of de¬ 
spond to the unwary neigh¬ 
bor who ventured through 
on a dark, wet night. A more 
unattractive spot could not 
be imagined. The soil was 
so poor that it afforded 
scant pasturage even to 
grasshoppers. 
This I had plowed up by 
a farmer, who looked unut¬ 
terable skepticism when I 
confided my plans to him. 
He turned up eighteen fur¬ 
rows, each thirty feet long, 
of leaden rubber. When 
these were sufficiently dried 
they were thrown out by the enthu¬ 
siastic gardener and the colored man- 
of-all-work, who sighed and sulked and 
confided to the cook that “Nuffin gwine 
to grow in dat ole soil, harder 'n de 
heart of Phar’o.” 
Neither inspiration nor perspiration 
was lacking, however, and heroic per¬ 
severance finally effected an excavation 
of one foot in depth over the whole 
pond area, with deeper holes the size 
of washtubs which were filled with the 
soil, I have learned, water lilies love. 
Oddly enough, all water garden experts 
bid you beware of soil taken from old 
bogs or swampy places ! 
Since I was surrounded by sand 
dunes in front and modeling clay in the 
rear, and good garden soil must be 
brought from a distance and paid for 
by the spoonful, I determined to make 
an experiment, and sent the darkey out, 
his trousers rolled to his knees, his 
woolly pate adorned with a paper cap 
made from the end of a flour sack bear¬ 
ing the word “Glory” in prominent blue 
letters. These caps seemed to stimu¬ 
late his halting appetite for adventure. 
Perhaps he drank in the rather too 
openly voiced opinion of the neighbors that he added a tropical 
touch to a northern landscape, and should be encouraged. 
The same farmer who had charged me a dollar for a micro¬ 
scopic load of garden soil was obviously pleased to give us as 
much of his’ bog as we cared to remove. This was mixed in the 
proportion of two-thirds muck and one-third well rotted manure. 
The lily roots were placed in old baskets and carefully lowered 
into the beguiling depths of loam. It was hard to choose from 
the distracting list of water lilies, but I felt sure that in this, as 
in almost all other gardening, if a picture is wanted, the simplest 
way should be used. Shutting my eyes to the temptation of blue 
and lavender, I painted this picture with white and pale yellow 
and pink, selecting the hardiest varieties listed. 
These were planted in June, and they settled down into their 
new homes and began at once to show their appreciation of proper 
soil conditions by a sturdy growth. In July the first blossoms 
gladdened the gardener’s heart, as well as the hearts of her neigh¬ 
bors who sauntered over to scoff at the unsanitary frog-pond, but 
who remained to admire the beauty of the lilies in the pool and 
the margin of blue flag, transplanted by the hundred from a 
nearby pasture. 
They gave a riotous profusion of bloom and were a blending 
and unifying factor in my background scheme- — a bold splash 
of one color that led a visitor to tell me that, outside of Japan, 
he had not seen blue flag so treated. The iris were brought from 
the pasture in company with the Royal Osmunda fern, the Water 
Arum, the bodkin-like Pickerel weed, and a plant resembling the 
Gypsophilia in its daintiness of bloom, which was very beautiful 
the first year, but which later proved to be a pest, its growth being 
so lusty that it bade fair to take possession of the entire pond, 
and had to be pulled by the babies of 
the family, who waded out in their lit¬ 
tle bathing suits, clinging to the ram¬ 
pant cat-tails on shore. They clam¬ 
ored for tin pails in which to store the 
tadpoles, goldfish and caddis worms 
they were momentarily discovering; 
the very ones we had stocked the pond 
with for the purpose of destroying the 
mosquito larvae. 
The cat-tails delighted the children, 
and if one has a large pond area these 
should be planted. In my small space 
they proved a rank weed and were also 
pulled out, “though it took huskier arms 
than the ba¬ 
bies’ ” to do it. 
The garden 
had cost in coin 
just seven dol¬ 
lars, five for the 
water lilies and 
two for my 
plowman’s 
work. The rest 
had been gath¬ 
ered from Na¬ 
ture’s store 
from nearby 
fields and fence corners, and served as 
reminders of joyous trips made with 
the babies perched beside me on an old 
spring wagon, the mollified and some¬ 
what more interested negro driving old 
“Topsy,” and admonishing the children 
from time to time that “he done toted 
The lily roots were placed in old baskets and lowered into 
loam hauled from nearby bogs and swamps 
97 
