Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
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Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
This element of mystery does not extend to the flowers which I am told
once were in trim gardens, but which I have never seen there, such as
Ox-eye Daisies, Scotch Thistles, Chamomile, Tansy, Bergamot, Yarrow, and
all of the Mint family; they are to me truly wild. But when I find
flowers still cherished in our gardens, growing also in some wild spot,
I regard them with wonder. A great expanse of Coreopsis, a field of
Grape Hyacinth or Star of Bethlehem, roadsides of Coronilla or
Moneywort, rows of red Day Lily and Tiger Lily, patches of Sunflowers or
Jerusalem Artichokes, all are matters of thought; we long to trace their
wanderings, to have them tell whence and how they came. Bouncing Bet is
too cheerful and rollicking a wanderer to awaken sentiment. How gladly
has she been welcomed to our fields and roadsides. I could not willingly
spare her in our country drives, even to become again a cherished garden
dweller. She rivals the Succory in beautifying arid dust heaps and
barren railroad cuts, with her tender opalescent pink tints. How
wholesome and hearty her growth, how pleasant her fragrance. We can
never see her too often, nor ever stigmatize her, as have been so many
of our garden escapes, as "Now a dreaded weed."
[Illustration: Bouncing Bet.]
One of the weirdest of all flowers to me is the Butter-and-eggs, the
Toad-flax, which was once a garden child, but has run away from gardens
to wander in every field in the land. I haven't the slightest reason for
this regard of Butter-and-eggs, and I believe it is peculiar to myself,
just as is Dr. Forbes Watson's regard of the Marshmallow to him. I have
no uncanny or sad associations with it, and I never heard anything
"queer" about it. Thirty years ago, in a locality I knew well in central
Massachusetts, Butter-and-eggs was far from common; I even remember the
first time I saw it and was told its quaint name; now it grows there and
everywhere; it is a persistent weed. John Burroughs calls it "the
hateful Toad-flax," and old Manasseh Cutler, in a curious mixture of
compliment and slur, "a common, handsome, tedious weed." It travels
above ground and below ground, and in some soils will run out the grass.
It knows how to allure the bumblebee, however, and has honey in its
heart. I think it a lovely flower, though it is queer; and it is a
delight to the scientific botanist, in the delicate perfection of its
methods and means of fertilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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