Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1917 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

LEARNING TO KNOW FLOWERS Information That Would Be of lm» mense Value to the Man Who Is Planning a Home. i The home-maker, with facilities at hand, could choose wisely what to plant in his own home groifnds. Lectures, instructive and helpful though they are, can hardly accomplish for the amateur planter in the course of half a y ear what a single visit to a shrubbery or a perennial garden would accomplish for him in half an hour. And, In addition, as everyone knows, the parks themselves would be all the more interesting and delightful V r these garden sections. » The average person knows few shrubs and few flowers. To tell one of these that the snowball with which lie is familiar is only one of a score ar more of available viburnums; that <he shrub he knows as a “lilac” can be had in numerous varieties, some growing even into tree form, or that vhat he calls the “syringa” or the “mock orange,” can be had in dwarf bush that is a mere pygmy beside its robust cousin—to recount facts of this ■sort is to surprise him. Yet it is important that facts of this sort V® brought before him. There is too much uniformity in the planting of ‘ity yards —too much use made the same material. Public gardens, exhibiting not only the common varies ies, but the uncommon as well, those mot so often met with but despite that, quite as beautiful as the others, would serve to overcome the tendency toward monotony already only too apparent. There are many purposes, as a matter of fact, that these gardens would serve, all of which the park board might do well to consider.