N O one but Polly 
Addicks wool d 
have wanted to have the 
Club at her house and to 
go in for the decorations 
when the subject was 
weeds. But Polly can 
turn a weed into tri¬ 
umph—and did. And 
the talk which she fur¬ 
nished us about weeds 
put these abominations 
in an altogether new 
light. It was given by 
an artist — a real one, not 
the Salton-Appleby kind 
—and he said so much 
about weeds that no one 
save an artist would 
ever have thought of. 
Consequently, everyone 
was enthusiastic by the 
time the meeting was 
over. And a goodly per¬ 
centage of the dinner 
tables in town that were 
decorated at all were 
decorated that night— 
or. anyway, the next night—with weeds, I am perfectly sure. 
The Addicks house is as unusual and as interesting as both 
Polly and Hal—one of those houses that ordinary people go into 
ecstasies about and say, “How clever!” and “What a charming 
idea!” fifty times over in the course of a visit, but would die 
before they would dare attempt for themselves—happily! And 
decorated with weeds it was lovely! But then, decorated with 
anything it would be lovely. The tables in the contest, which 
was for a luncheon table decorated with weeds, were outdoors in 
the paved arbor-like transition that joins the house to the garden 
wall, which in its turn shuts out all hint of the railroad track 
immediately below, but through openings discreetly placed high 
up in it, lets in vistas of the distant hills and the bay, blue and 
dimpling. So of course they were enough indoors to seem like 
real luncheon tables, tiny though they were. 
The contest was judged by the Club judges, by the artist—a 
great celebrity whose name is a “household word"—and by popu¬ 
lar vote; consequently there had to be three prizes. Polly herself 
provided the prize awarded according to the artist’s pronounce¬ 
ment, for this was over and above anything the Club had planned, 
and just a little surprise of hers, but the other two came in the 
regular program. The judges awarded first to a really lovely 
scheme in white and gold—daisies and “butter-and-eggs" — ar¬ 
ranged in an elaborate center mountain over which no one could 
possibly see his vis-a-vis, with place bouquets in matching hold¬ 
ers second only to it in towering majesty; all very lovely but 
somewhat overpowering and not somehow what I should call 
truly “wild” in scheme. 
My idea of decorating with weeds is just what Polly did — and 
won the artist’s prize and almost won the popular prize; a simple 
arrangement of the flowers chosen, conforming as nearly as pos¬ 
sible to their habit of growth. She chose for hers wild carrot or 
Queen’s lace, and the berries of the cornel which grows thickly 
in the old woods back of the gas house — cornus amomiirn, I think 
it is — which are bluish. She cut them with short stems and stuck 
them into sand in a very low, broad, Japanese bowl of wood, so 
that the lines of the entire composition were spreading and flat, 
the round of the bowl being a repetition of the round, flat cymes 
of both the flowers and 
the berries; for leafage 
she used wild grape 
branches that lay over 
the edges of the bowl, 
trailing off naturally and 
with their own natural 
lovely lines tracing a 
pattern on the wood of 
the table beneath. 
This table and the 
winner of the popular 
vote prize almost tied, 
but the general taste was 
not equal to overlooking 
the glories of red clover 
and bindweed and those 
feathery headed grasses 
that go to seed so deco- 
ratively. And these were 
exquisite, I am bound to 
admit. I think the artist 
had difficulty in deciding 
between them ; but 
somehow the harmony 
of line in the Queen’s 
lace and berries and low 
shallow bowl was very 
alluring. And his fame is as a draughtsman rather than a color¬ 
ist, so line and composition would appeal to him rather more 
convincingly than it would to ordinary people, I suppose. 
A weed is, of course, “a plant out of place”—this is how he be¬ 
gan—yet it would be a very ugly world if weeds were not as 
persistent and life-loving and determined to grow, in place or out 
of it, as they are. For they clothe the waste places which, un¬ 
clothed, would be simply unbearable to the sense of sight under 
the glare of the summer sun. And they furnish food for some 
of the most delightful and most worthy members of the aerial 
brotherhood, as well as sketch material for painters innumerable, 
worthy and unworthy, delightful and tiresome! 
But, as a matter of fact, almost anything is a weed in some 
part of the earth—for of course everything must grow naturally 
and wild somewhere. And, after all, the natural wild growth of 
a region is what man regards as “weed" growth in every part of 
the world. Taken up and sent to the other ends of the earth, 
where it has never been seen, and the natives will fall over each 
other to secure specimens for their gardens! 
All weeds are not by any means pests, even to the gardener. 
So being a weed is not the despicable thing; but being a pestifer¬ 
ous, presuming, overbearing bully, is. Just as any upstart— 
crowding, elbowing, pushing—always is. Moreover, there are 
weeds to be feared as well as weeds to be despised — and weeds 
to be respected and loved. For there are the noxious ones, mas¬ 
querading often in the loveliest forms, deluding the unaware into 
thinking them desirable, and so getting in their deadly work; act¬ 
ually deadly more often perhaps than we have much of an idea. 
For the number of children who are fatally poisoned annually by 
eating some one of the toxic plants is really considerable; and 
grown-ups do not escape. 
When he had gone this far, everyone wanted to ask questions 
-— and did! And having been badly poisoned by the venomous 
sumach once upon a time when sketching, he told us he had made 
a special study of poisonous plants. “Beautiful poison ivy,” as lie 
called it, had almost blinded a friend, too, whose baby brought 
him a bouquet of wild flowers to smell which contained some 
(Continued on page 109) 
true story of the work of a certain such club and its accomplishments taken from the diary of one 
of its members. What this club actually did should be a stimulus to all who love gardens and a 
guide to the ways and means of improving our towns and villages. These chapters began in the 
February issue, when the organization of the Club was discussed. Each installment shows how the 
program of activities was followed out. 
99 
