Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 208, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1914 — BLOSSOMS ALONG THE LINE [ARTICLE]

BLOSSOMS ALONG THE LINE

English Railroad Encourages Its Employes to Cultivate Gardens and the Men Are Enthusiastic.

Flower gardens, from Whitechapel to Walham Green, on the District railroad, will shortly burst into blossom wherever (here is a space open to the air and eun, reports the London Dally News. At the ends of platforms, outside the mouths of tunnels, in sidings, under signal boxes, on every available inch of space along the line where the sun cah penetrate, the District railroad servants, from inspectors to plate-lay-ers, have cultivated among them between eighty and a hundred little flower gardens, for the beet among which the directors are this year offering $lB5 in prizes. “We encourage these railroad track gardens,” said Mr. W. E. Blake, superintendent of the line, "because we want to cultivate tidiness among our men and make our line as attractive to passengers as possible. Each amateur gardener is given $1.25 and the necessary mold, with the stipulation that he grows flowers only and no vegetables, asfHhe idea; of the gardens is purely decorative. Some of the gardens thrive amidst most unpromising surroundings. There is a brilliant little flower garden at Whitechapel, another at Aidgate, while several well-tended plots provide a pleasant spot of color at the Mansion House station. Between the ends of the platforms and the mouths of the tunnels at South Kensington, there is a most ambitious example of landscape gardening. The gardens are inspected at the end of July, when the directors spend six hours in a tour of inspection in a special train.”