72 
House <3° Garden 
THE (JAR DEN of SWEET PERFUMES 
Color, Form, Flabit—with These in View JVe Are Accustomed to Choose Our Flowers 
Let Us Now Delight Our Sense of Smell as Well as Sight 
KI.SA REHMAN 
T O appreciate a garden to the very fullest 
extent, all our senses are called into 
play. Our eyes ought to be as sensitive to 
color as a painter’s and to form as a sculp¬ 
tor’s. Our ears should be attuned as a 
musician’s to every bird note and to the 
very faintest rustle of the leaves. We 
should be conscious of the very feel of the 
earth and of the grass under our feet, and 
be keen to every flower fragrance wafted to 
us on the tiniest breeze. In fact, fragrance 
is to some the living essence of a garden. 
No two people are endowed alike and 
even quite normal people hav^e senses in 
different degrees of perfection and of culti¬ 
vation. I know some people who will toler¬ 
ate without a qualm the most violent color 
discord in a garden and yet be disagreeably 
impressed by the scent of a few marigolds. 
There are some who, altogether unmoved by 
the beauty of a garden’s form, by the static 
grace of flower stalks, by the rhythm of 
flower distribution in a garden, are caught in 
ecstasy by a bit of lemon verbena. 
To those who are deprived of the sense of 
smell, the world of fragrance must seem very 
wonderful, indeed. It must seem like a lost 
art to them. I have often wondered whether 
they can fully appreciate the references to 
lavender and rosemary in the poets and 
whether they can fully catch the sweet ro¬ 
mance of the past, of dainty ladies in crino¬ 
lines making pot-pourri of rose petals—for is 
not this storing of faded flowers, this laying 
things away in lavender, but gathering u[) 
memories of bygone days spent in the sur¬ 
roundings of lovely gardens? 
On the other hand, it seems all but mirac¬ 
ulous that one may be blind and still enjoy 
a garden, be it a garden with fragrance, a 
garden with violets and pansies, primroses 
and daffodils, stocks and mignonette, iris 
and lilies, sweet peas and sweet scabiosa. I 
FR.\GRANT PLANTS 
Flowers 
Rock cress 
Sweet Woodruff 
Wallflower 
Stocks 
Clematis 
Lily-of-the-valley 
Scotch pink 
Gas plant 
Plantain lily (funkia) 
Lemon lily 
Lavender 
Evening primrose 
Peony 
Heliotrope 
Mignonette 
Rose 
Madonna lily 
Shrubs 
.•\zalea 
Lilac 
Fragrant honeysuckle 
Magnolia 
Strawberry shrub 
Sweet pepper bush 
Syringa 
have often wondered whether to a person 
with the hypersensitiveness of the blind the 
intermingling of flower fragrance seems like 
the intermingling of flower color to one who 
has sight, and whether it presents the same 
difficulties and pleasures. Is this mingled 
fragrance just a riotous tangle or something 
inexpressibly subtle—quite too subtle for 
one who has the aid of sight—just as color 
in a garden may sometimes be one and some¬ 
times the other, too. 
It is not in this way, however, that we 
would use fragrance in a garden. We would 
not mingle them without discrimination. 
Each fragrance in itself is too precious, too 
significant. Think of all the many kinds of 
fragrance of flower and leaf and woody stem. 
There are the aromatic thyme and bee 
balm, the sweet scented rose geranium and 
heliotrope. There is the overwhelming love¬ 
liness of honeysuckle, the daintiness of vio¬ 
lets and lilies-of-the-valley, the alluring 
clove delicacy of pinks. There are the cloy¬ 
ing hyacinths, the sweet smelling roses and 
lilies. There is the heavy sweetness of privet 
flowers so soothing to some, so disagreeable 
to others; there is the subtle, penetrating 
quality of water-lilies; there is the hot 
pungency of marigolds. Ihere is the fra¬ 
grance of lindens and Paulownia trees in 
flower, and the sweetness of swamp magno¬ 
lias; there are the pines and the balsam firs 
with refreshing fragrances unlike any other. 
There is hawthorn with a fragrance that 
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