Editor’s Note: The garden club is a great factor in neighborhood bet¬ 
terment. Here is a 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. The first and 
second chapters of the record of the club appeared in the February and March 
issues respectively. 
T HIS month we met at my house — and I was glad it was a 
soggy afternoon, so no one could go prospecting around 
to size up my bulbs. The bulb show comes as a special evening 
meeting later in the month — for everyone felt this would insure 
its being a greater success. And I want to spring my checkered 
lilies— Fritillaria meleagris- —as a novelty, and enter for a special 
prize; so, of course I do not want anyone to suspect I have them 
at all. I naturalized them last fall, a hundred strong, on the 
12- by 40-foot space where the ground falls gently at the east of 
the garden to the clump of shadbush that were somehow over¬ 
looked—thank the Fates!—when this land was “developed.’ We 
do not mow that grass; it is rather moist ground, and there is par¬ 
tial shade there, which the bulb books say these things like. I 
have never seen one of the flowers—took them on faith!—even 
though they are so “common in English meadows; and I do not 
think many of the Club have, either. They look very promising 
for the date of the show, if I am any judge, and I am correspond¬ 
ingly excited at the prospect of producing a small sensation. For, 
if they fulfil their promise, I shall be able to send an imposing 
mass of the queer blooms. 
Helen Brinkerly will get the first prize, of course. Everyone 
who knows about her garden concedes that, for she started out to 
try everything in the catalogues last fall, and in just daffodils and 
jonquils alone she has over fifty varieties. Then, she has every 
kind of hyacinth that ever came out of Holland—not quite, but 
almost—and tulips by scores; and, really, every kind of bulb that 
will grow here out of doors, in lots of from one to three or four, 
Of course, her little bulb garden is full—but I don't believe she 
has a checkered lily. Of naturalizing, she has done none, for her 
place is not suited to it; and these lilies are at their best, they say, 
only when naturalized. 
This program committee is a worked-to-the-bone set of un¬ 
fortunates ; there is no doubt about that! But I would not give 
up the job for a good deal — for it is going to mean a wonderfully 
varied experience providing the programs, judging by our be¬ 
ginning. We made up our minds that there was just one person 
in this locality whom we wanted to have come and talk to us about 
making seedbeds; but be was the very last person that it seemed 
thinkable would come. But Miss Lucy and Mrs. Hal Addicks — • 
Polly Story that was — and I went touring one clay last month in 
the Addicks machine; and we toured off up the Drift Road, on 
and on until we were almost to the State line; and then we turned 
in boldly at his gates—the gates of “Stone Acres.” 
I was simply petrified at our temerity — but, as Polly Addicks 
said, we would never even see this man if we wrote or 'phoned 
him in advance that we were coming. And there were three of 
us, she reminded me, which ought to make us equal to whatever 
the occasion might turn out to be. 
Happily for us, the master of “Stone Acres” has a sense of 
humor — for we nearly ran him down on his own driveway while 
we were debating loudly—the driveway runs through a rocky, 
wild, half-mile of woods, and we never dreamed anyone was 
about—as to who should be spokeswoman, and what she should 
say, and who should ring at his door. Mrs. Addicks was running 
the car herself, for we wanted to be without witnesses to our 
meeting and interview with this ogre-hermit combination, which 
common belief held the master of “Stone Acres” to be; and she 
was so startled at her escape and his that she was furious with 
him, and proceeded to tell him what she thought of the careless¬ 
ness which led him to step out suddenly into the road from a 
rocky cut — evidently the end of a path leading off to somewhere— 
and to scold him roundly and generally. We didn’t know then, 
and have never found out since, whether she knew it was he or 
thought it one of his men, for she is really quite touchy about it— 
but I suspect she thought it one of his men, though there is no 
telling, seeing it was Polly. 
(288) 
