Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set ForthEarle, Alice Morse
History
Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth
Earle, Alice Morse
Gardens; Landscape gardening
The Tiger Lily is usually thought upon as a truly old-fashioned flower,
a veritable antique; it is a favorite of artists to place as an
accessory in their colonial gardens, and of authors for their
flower-beds of Revolutionary days, but it was not known either in formal
garden or front yard, until after "the days when we lived under the
King." The bulbs were first brought to England from Eastern Asia in 1804
by Captain Kirkpatrick of the East India Company's Service, and shared
with the Japan Lily the honor of being the first Eastern Lilies
introduced into European gardens. A few years ago an old gentleman, Mr.
Isaac Pitman, who was then about eighty-five years of age, told me that
he recalled distinctly when Tiger Lilies first appeared in our gardens,
and where he first saw them growing in Boston. So instead of being an
old-time flower, or even an old-comer from the Orient, it is one of the
novelties of this century. How readily has it made itself at home, and
even wandered wild down our roadsides!
The two simple colors of Phlox of the old-time front yard, white and
crimson-purple, are now augmented by tints of salmon, vermilion, and
rose. I recall with special pleasure the profuse garden decoration at
East Hampton, Long Island, of a pure cherry-colored Phlox, generally a
doubtful color to me, but there so associated with the white blooms of
various other plants, and backed by a high hedge covered solidly with
blossoming Honeysuckle, that it was wonderfully successful.
To other members of the Phlox family, all natives of our own continent,
the old front yard owed much; the Moss Pink sometimes crowded out both
Grass and its companion the Periwinkle; it is still found in our
gardens, and bountifully also in our fields; either in white or pink, it
is one of the satisfactions of spring, and its cheerful little blossom
is of wonderful use in many waste places. An old-fashioned bloom, the
low-growing _Phlox amoena_, with its queerly fuzzy leaves and bright
crimson blossoms, was among the most distinctly old-fashioned flowers of
the front yard. It was tolerated rather than cultivated, as was its
companion, the Arabis or Rock Cress--both crowding, monopolizing
creatures. I remember well how they spread over the beds and up the
grass banks in my mother's garden, how sternly they were uprooted, in
spite of the pretty name of the Arabis--"Snow in Summer."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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