But a garden of goldenrod and asters would be somewhat dull from May to mid-August, and somewhat monotonous thereafter.  I have no intention, of course, of barring out from my garden the stock perennials, and, indeed, I have already salvaged from my old place or grown from seed the indispensable phloxes, foxgloves, larkspur, hollyhocks, sweet william, climbing roses, platycodons and the like.  But let me merely mention a few of the wild things I have brought in from the immediate neighborhood, and see if they do not promise, when naturally planted where the borders wind under trees, or grouped to the grass in front of asters, ferns, goldenrod and the shrubs I shall mention later, a kind of beauty and interest not to be secured by the usual garden methods.

There are painted trilliums, yellow and pink lady’s slippers, Orchis spectabilis, hepaticas, bloodroot, violets, jack-in-the-pulpit, masses of baneberries, solomon’s seal, true and false; smooth false foxglove, five-flowered and closed gentians, meadow lilies (Canadensis) and wood lilies (Philadelphicum), the former especially being here so common that I can go out and dig up the bulbs by the score, taking only one or two from any one spot.  These are but a few of the flowers, blooming from early spring to late fall, in the borders, and I have forgotten to mention the little bunch berries from my own woods as an edging plant.

Let me turn now for a moment to the hedge and shrubbery screen which must intervene between my west border and the highway, and which is the crux of the garden.  The hedge is already started with hemlocks from the mountain side, put in last spring.  I must admit nursery in-grown evergreens are easier to handle, and make a better and quicker growth.  But I am out now to see how far I can get with absolutely native material.  Between the hedge and the border, where at first I dreamed of lilacs and the like, I now visualize as filling up with the kind of growth which lines our roads, and which is no less beautiful and much more fitting.  From my own woods will come in spring (the only safe time to move them) masses of mountain laurel and azalea.  From my own pasture fence-line will come red osier, dogwood, with its white blooms, its blue berries, its winter stem-coloring, and elderberry.  From my own woods have already come several four-foot maple-leaved vibernums, which, though moved in June, throve and have made a fine new growth.  There will be, also, a shadbush or two and certainly some hobble bushes, with here and there a young pine and small, slender canoe birch.  Here and there will be a clump of flowering raspberry.  I shall not scorn spireas, and I must have at least one big white syringa to scent the twilight; but the great mass of my screen will be exactly what nature would plant there if she were left alone—­minus the choke cherries.  You always have to exercise a little supervision over nature!