As the nineteenth century drew to a close, a Texas woman's garden often served many purposes, with herbs for cooking, medicinal, and household uses; plants such as agarita and indigo for dyeing; and fibrous plants such as flax for quilts and other textiles for family and home. It would also have included a cutting garden for bouquets, "pass-along" plants shared among friends and family, roses, and, if possible, a shady bower for sitting and contemplation. A cottage garden in town likely was fenced against foraging deer, rabbits, and other creatures and might have had a central feature such as a sundial. In Fayette County and surrounding Central Texas, town gardens of this kind contained flowers, shrubs, and trees that might have been present in that period, reflecting the difficulties of day-to-day life faced by Texans around the turn of the twentieth century and during the Depression, when Texas women still found the time, energy, and inspiration to create beauty in quilts and gardens from what they had to work with.