30 
House & Garden 
FLOWERS THAT ARE FORGOTTEN 
The Changing Styles in the Garden Bring Us New / an (ties 
But Many Lovely Blossoms of the Past Are Lost 
T HE snows of yesteryear and the old loves of Villon’s poem are 
nought compared with the flowers that have been forgotten. 
Turn back to some ancient herbarium or to the pages of Paxton’s 
Magazine of Botany (a divine series for lovers of old garden books) 
and see the varieties that one never even hears of today. Some nave 
been improved and doubled out of all recognition—lovely, tender 
little blossoms, slim virgins, now grown to middle age and obese with 
florescence. Some have had their forms so developed that the fra¬ 
grance is all but gone; we have ruffled the sweet pea at the sacrifice 
of that delicate odor that clung to the early varieties. Other flowers 
have just faded out of sight; they may be harbored from year to year 
in hidden corners of old gardens, the way one harbors a down-and- 
out friend in an attic bedroom, and some day a florist will re-discover 
them, give them a fancy name and wax fat on the proceeds. Still 
others felt the scourge of disease, proved too much bother for the gar¬ 
dener and consequently were dropped. Some flowers, like some people, 
are very difficult to get along with, and one finds oneself seeing less 
and less of them until they are lost to sight altogether. 
Flowers are forgotten for innumerable reasons and perhaps the most 
significant reason is the fact that there are fads in horticulture just 
as there are fads in clothes. The styles change gradually, but they 
change none the less. And this is as it should be. The changing 
interest gives a chance for forgotten flowers to be revived and the 
newer improvements to be tried out. Certain old standbys we cannot 
do without, but the “novelty” class must be tried, tested, and given 
every opportunity to prove itself worthy of garden acceptance. These 
changes of interest come in big cycles, the process is slow and there 
is none of the flashy touch-and-go of such fads as henna hair dye 
and short skirts. Styles in gardens and flowers are not made over 
night. We do not hang on the word of some Parisian couturiere or 
the dictate of a Bond Street tailor. But the changes happen, just the 
same, and gardeners are cognizant of them. 
O NE of the most wicked blows ever dealt at flowers, a blow that 
has caused some radical changes in American horticulture, is 
contained in the Government ruling known as Quarantine No. 
37. Designed to keep diseased stock out of the country, to prevent 
pests from being imported with foreign plants, this ruling has only 
succeeded in making the name of America anathema to growers in 
other parts of the world. It may, on the other hand, oblige American 
horticulturists to create their own varieties; meantime, garden lovers 
here must wait and accept whatever they can get. Hundreds of 
varieties do not come true to seed, so that there is no benefit to be 
derived from importing the seed, which the ruling permits. The 
ruling is quite absurd in many ways. One type of bulb is permitted 
past the customs and another, equally capable of resisting disease, is 
forbidden entrance. The lovely orchid falls into the same forbidden 
category as good liquor and bad drugs. 
Only the other day I stood on the wharf watching a boatload of 
people come in from Bermuda. They carried armfuls of cut flowers 
and each package was rigorously inspected lest one of the flowers had 
a root by which it could perpetuate itself in this country. The cus¬ 
toms officers, alive to their duties, took away the plants. So flowers 
are classed with whiskey! I could have wept! For the} were taking 
away the whiskey, too. 
T HE current change in the style of landscaping is one of the 
most interesting that garden lovers could wish to see. The 
pendulum that once rested on bedding plants has swung to the 
opposite extreme. We are now going through the throes of Naturalitis. 
Speak to a landscape architect about flower borders and he will counter 
with massed evergreen plantings. It seems that color in the garden is 
now considered rather a plaything for sentimental women. Wild 
gardening and massed shrubl>ery and tree-moving are the present-day 
passions of landscaping. 
One cannot but sympathize with the endeavors of our land¬ 
scapists. They hope to make a new heaven of these United States 
and a new earth—and they will do it eventually. They can see a 
place as a whole, they can, by very simple changes, give a property 
unity of design and unusual interest. To them is greatly due the 
honor for making America a country of beautiful gardens, which it is 
becoming, our English cousins to the contrary. They are also teaching 
us to appreciate our own native shrubs. But—and here I set down 
both feet—I think it a great mistake to run to extremes in garden 
design. Wild gardening and massed shrubbery can be overdone, can 
be out of place, can be as vicious in their way as ever the old-fashioned 
bedding was in its. When fads run to an extreme there is inevitably 
a reaction, and there will be an eventual reaction to this present style. 
Spare us, O spare us the stiff beds of annuals! Spare us the iron 
stag browsing in concentric circles of anemic pink and baby blue 
asters! Spare us the carpet bedding of lawns with red salvia and 
lavender ageratum! But let us have gardens where a sense of balance 
and fitness are observed, where wild gardening will find a place be¬ 
cause it is logical and the site demands it, where shrubbery will be 
used with fastidious reserve, where the herbaceous border will cease 
from troubling and the annuals be at rest! 
E VERY gardener, however hardened, feels the temptation of these 
changing styles. He also finds an almost irresistible lure in 
the pages of “novelties” that illumine our seed and plant catalogs 
each year. His principle in life is that he is always willing to try a 
thing once. Having tried it, he is quite ready to put it in the class of 
forgotten flowers and fruits, if it does not prove up to expectations. 
The trouble, of course, lies in the fact that we all cast our garden 
expectations too high, and for this the writers of seed catalogs are 
very much to blame. They seem to have inherited from the press 
agent of the circus the gift for superlative and glowing descriptions. 
Harken to this seductive rhapsody on a new cucumber: “It is dark- 
skinned, very handsome in shape, most prolific, and of splendid flavor. 
It has hardly any neck, but a nice sloping shoulder.” What if the 
hopeful gardener’s cucumber grows with a squat neck and big shoulder! 
Under such circumstances he most certainly would want to forget it! 
Designed for a garden foun¬ 
tain decoration, this group 
by Willard Dryden Paddock 
is conveniently elastic, as the 
figures can be arranged in 
many ways. The two little 
figures at the base are play- > 
ing with fish which are the 
outlets for the fountain 
