28 
House 
Garden 
HE WINTER OF 
AST year in London they were singing a pleasant little song 
called “Where Do the Elies Go in the Winter Time?” It was a 
thought-provoking ballad; in fact, after hearing every newsboy, 
porter, messenger and indolent male whistle it, you began to wonder 
where the flies did go. 
Recently a question of like character has been propounded, a question 
that makes the fly mystery pale into insignificance. An enquiring 
reader of this magazine wanted to know where gardeners go in the 
winter time. 
After much investigation we discovered that those who are endowed 
with an abundance of this world’s goods go South or to California or to 
the palmy and liberal isles of the Caribbean. The less fortunate simply 
stay at home and endure the winter of their discontent as best they can. 
If they have a greenhouse, the world can wag on; if they have no green¬ 
house, then winter is a sorry time for them. 
T 
L 
A S most of us north of Washington are garden shut-ins during the 
winter months, I am proposing two or three seemly amusements 
that may help make the days pass speedily. 
Of course, the gardener may, if he chooses, read old catalogs, but by 
November he will be able to recite all the items from Achillea “The 
Pearl” to Zygadenus with as much ease and accuracy as a fourth-year 
lad recites the Presidents of the United States. After that, catalogs pall. 
Or he may carry on a lengthy correspondence with other gardeners 
between the times he is occupied washing aphids off the house plants. 
This is a pleasant diversion and helps widen the circle of one’s friends. 
He may even conceivably read a vast library of gardening books and 
attain wisdom thereby, although, having read several score of them, I 
find a sameness that almost drives me to tears. (Incidentally, if I have 
to read one more book or article in which “My Garden Is a Lovesome 
Spot” is quoted, I sha n’t be held responsible for the consequences.) 
O NE perfectly innocuous winter amusement for gardeners is to 
make a gardener’s anthology. Take a loose-leaf binder and paste 
in, under alphabetical heads or topics, various snatches of horti¬ 
cultural news, bits of pretty garden prose and verse, practical data and 
notes of controversies clipped from magazines and catalogs or copied 
out of books. A symposium of this kind can be a perfect gold mine of 
good ideas. You may collect, for example, half a dozen different reme¬ 
dies for delphinium blight, affording a variety of treatment for a variety 
of circumstances. Another page may contain the names and pictures of 
newer narcissi—kinds that, as yet, are far beyond your purse. And so on. 
I know of one such book that has served not only to amuse its com¬ 
piler but to which is attributed an uncommon pathological value. When 
a gardener acquaintance falls sick, this book is carried to her bedside. 
It has effected many cures. What the Mother of Kazan ikon is to the 
devout Orthodox Russian, this garden anthology is to the lover of flowers. 
D 
URING the past few years it has fallen to my lot to read quite 
a number of nursery, seed and horticultural trade journals, and 
I have noticed that a singular bond of sympathy exists in these 
groups. It is especially marked in the obituaries of deceased members 
of horticulturists’ families. Not satisfied with printing kind words 
about the seedsmen or nursery growers who have passed, these journals 
extend their sympathy to Mary and John and Annie and the rest of the 
family who chance to be called from this sphere. Quite amazing! 
At first I figured that dealing with flowers and such made these men 
more tender hearted than the rest of us. Doubtless it does. Then 
gradually the light dawned. When little Celia Strange is gathered to 
her rest, nurserymen everywhere feel a distinct loss because once on a 
day Celia’s papa, in a proud hour of hybridizing attainment, named 
his latest gladiolus after her. For years Celia Strange was part of the 
& 
OUR DISCONTENT 
nurserymen’s stock in trade. They constantly spoke of her to their 
customers, printed her name in their price lists, compared her beauties 
with the choice colors and form of other flower sons and daughters. 
Whv shouldn’t the horticultural world feel personal bereavement when 
the original Celia Strange comes to the end of her flowering? 
O NE of these days—and this can afford another winter amuse¬ 
ment—I would like to investigate who the original persons were 
after whom some of our flow'er varieties are named. 
Who was Marie La Graye and what relationship did she bear to the 
hybridizer who gave her name to a lilac and several other flowers? 
Who was Mme. Chereau of iris fame? 
What romance was attached to naming a hardy aster after Peggy 
Ballard, and who was Peggy? 
What kind of family are the Lomas, immortalized by a long line— 
male and female alike—of dahlias? 
What has become of these old flower girls? Of Minnie Burgle, of 
Dorothy Perkins, of Caroline Testout and Frau Karl Druschki? 
What vision was the rose grower dreaming of when he named his new 
bud “Killarney Queen”? 
What little package was disturbing the sleep of the sneezewort hybrid¬ 
izer when he called his new strain “Riverton Beauty”? 
Did he ever marry the girl, that originator of chrysanthemums who 
fondly dubbed his latest production “Bride of Kent”? 
The other day, delving in an old gardening book, I came across an 
item named Azalea Danielsiana. This name suggested no romance 
until I read that in the year 1830 a Captain Daniels, master of a ship 
belonging to the Honorable East India Company’s service, brought the 
original plant to England. Naturally it would be named after him. 
Not so! The book attests to the fact that it is named after his wife,— 
it was Mrs. Captain Daniels’ azalea. Whether or not she accompanied 
him on his voyages the book fails to state, but I can imagine the pretty 
family scene that must have ensued when the captain learned that the 
azalea was to be named Danielsiana, how he tossed a brave seaman’s 
compliment to her across the breakfast table, insisting that she be the 
honored one, not he. 
D ELVING in these old gardening books affords another winter 
divertisement. Take an early issue of the Botanical Magazine 
or any volume of Paxton’s Magazine of Botany —both of them 
printed a century or more ago—and see what a mine of amusing and 
instructive anecdote these books contain—how Mr. Drummond gave his 
name to the annual phlox, and why the scarlet lobelia honors Lobel, 
the botanist and physician who died in 1616. 
Read the first accounts of Brachycome Iberidifolia, the Swan River 
Daisy, “now flowering in the open border at Mr. Low’s, Clapton.” At 
that time, May, 1840, the writer wasn’t sure whether it was of annual 
or perennial duration, although he suspected the former. He said it 
deserved general cultivation—and today you can find it in any of our 
seed catalogs, which proves that the gentleman was right. 
Or consider the solemn lecture he reads English gardeners for neglect¬ 
ing “so valuable a group of plants” as the gladioli. What would he 
say if he saw our lists today! He even ventures to suggest that lovers 
of new flowers might do well to plant gladioli in the open border instead 
of growing them under glass. 
And if you think that the weakness for superlatives in flower de¬ 
scriptions is newly acquired by our catalog writers, consider this verbal 
flight of the year 1839—“The Delphinium grandiflora is an especiallv 
magnificent species; and its flowers, when liberally borne, are too daz¬ 
zling to be gazed upon without greatly weakening the visual nerves.” I 
ask you, has any modern catalog editor ever written a flower caption 
more sublime? 
