Old Time Gardens
Tales of an Old Settler
Springfield Leader, March 8, 1930 page 3
"The Old Settler was studying a seed catalog when I stopped to say good morning and to inquire after the long promised news story; but so absorbed was he in the flower and vegetable book that we knew he had no time for such a trifle as a headline story.
"'Look here, sister,' he beamed, "the old-fashioned flowers are coming back in style again. You know there are styles in flowers and gardens just like everything else. And here they are advertising all the old favorites, heliotrope, mignonette, bleeding hearts, sweet lavender, tube roses, and all the rest. My, it takes a man back to his boyhood, sure, to think about the old gardens we used to have.
"'When I was a boy some 50 years ago, the gardens were formal affairs, all laid out in little round, square and diamond shaped beds, bordered with bricks and boards. Then after awhile persons who were up with the times, dug up their front yard gardens and planted everything away from the house, in rows along the sides and back. And now, although the shrubbery and flower planting is very informal, and there are no little square beds out in the front yards, everyone is planting shrubs around close to their houses, and mighty pretty it looks, too.
“'Along about 50 years ago, one of the most elaborate flower gardens in the town was right about where the Kentwood Arms hotel now is; it was in the yard of Henry Sheppard[sic]. Another mighty pretty one was the garden of John Demuth, when the Demuth family lived in the 200 block East Walnut Street. Then the McGregor home, which was where the water company's office now is on Boonville, and the Waddill home, which was where the city tourist park now is, were both noted years ago for the wonderful flowers growing there.
“'Almost everyone in those days got their flowers and shrubs from some friend, who already had a start of them, but there was an old nursery owned by a man named Rountree out a little east of the city limits between East Walnut and Elm Streets. The city limits only went to about Dollison Avenue then.
"'Yes, the old nursery was one of the show places of the town,' said the Old Settler, half to himself, as we were leaving."
The postcard above is labeled Mrs. Colby's Lilly Garden.
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