Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1900 — A WEED GARDEN. [ARTICLE]

A WEED GARDEN.

Many Beautiful Flowers That Are Ordinarily Discarded. It is remarkable how many really beautiful flowers are discarded because ordinarily they are classed as weeds. A woman who had plenty of land and a taste for experimenting made a “weed garden” this year which is a great success. She doesn’t know the names of all the outcasts she has gathered in, but she noticed last year all the wild things that grew and flowered neglected by the wayside, and transplanted those that appealed to her most strongly. “The main reason,” she urges, “that they attract so little notice when growing wild is that they are not massed and arranged as we place cultivated flowers to get the best effect. Now, that is what I have done. A wild flower, or a weed, as it is scornfully termed, that is too fragile to be thought much of will make a delicate, feathery mass which will be vastly admired when planted together by the score or more.” Even such a despised thing as the common ragweed is worthy of admiration if you happen to look at it aright, and it is finely effective as foliage for cut flowers. This weed gardener lias provided for a succession of blossoms from violets and dandelions to golden rod and late fall grasses, and nothing has repaid the gardener’s z efforts with better results than these absolutely free flowers.—Boston Herald.