“When one comes to orange colour the butterfly weed takes the prize.  This flower has a variety of names:  it is called pleurisy root, and wind root, and orange root.  Would you think that this gay little beggar was a member of the milkweed family?  It is.  When seed time comes it produces a seed pod like unto the milkweed pod only more slender than this.  All summer long the insects hover about it.  It is just like a signal to them.  “Come over here to me!” it calls to them all.  It is found in dry places, in the fields and pastures, along the dusty road sides, and by the sooty railroad track it flashes its signal.  You can make this plant feel at home surely.  And think of the butterflies that will visit your garden all summer long.

“Then later comes old Joe Pye weed.  Joe Pye was an Indian doctor but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his weed.  Yes, it has its connection.  For when old Joe Pye went out on a case of typhoid fever he carried this plant along; hence, its name.  The plant sometimes grows to ten feet in height.  Really the swamp is its home.  So if you are to use it at all remember that it must have this condition of great moisture, even to swampiness.  The flower clusters are of a charming colour, a beautiful dull pink.

“Another inhabitant of wet places is the turtle head.  The flower resembles in shape a turtle’s or a snake’s head, and so receives both names.

“When it comes to Queen Anne’s lace, you say that is a troublesome weed.  Yes, it is.  But it is truly beautiful with its lacy flower head.  A great bouquet of these on the porch, the dining table, or the school piano is a real picture.  A clump of these in the garden, if held in check, is simply stunning.  How can they be held down?  The only way is to let no flower heads go to seed.  The little, clinging, persistent, numerous seeds are seeds of trouble.  This lovely bother grows in any sort of soil.

“There are numbers and numbers of wild flowers I might have suggested.  These I have mentioned were not given for the purpose of a flower guide, but with just one end in view—­your understanding of how to study soil conditions for the work of starting a wild-flower garden.

“If you fear results, take but one or two flowers and study just what you select.  Having mastered, or better, become acquainted with a few, add more another year to your garden.  I think you will love your wild garden best of all before you are through with it.  It is a real study, you see.”

XII

LANDSCAPE GARDENING