Flower gardening

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. FLowers AND THE Home_......... I IJ. FLower GARDENS oF Many Kinps. 3 III. Layrnc Out THE FLOWER GARDEN. 17 IV. How To SuccEED WITH FLOWERS... 25 V. SPRING WoRK IN THE GARDEN.... 33 VI. Work For SuMMER Days........ 44 VII. THE GaRDEN’s NEEDS IN AUTUMN. 51 VIII. Borpers FoR A SMALL PLACE...... 63 IX. ACCUMULATING A GARDEN........ 49 X. Wuy a Harpy GARDEN Is BEsT.... 80 XI. Tue SPEcIAL VALUE OF PERENNIALS 88 XII. Tue Best Uses oF ANNUALS...... 102 XIII. SHRusBs IN THE FLOWER GARDEN...113 XIV. Sprinc AND SUMMER FLOWERS FROM BULBS .ovedvei<cseeedartaawes 128 XV. SEASONAL EFFECTS WITH FLOWERS. 144 XVI. Tue MAKING oF FLowER PICTURES.153

XVII.

XVIII.

Chapter I Flowers And The Home

BACON, in the famous essay that is an eternal joy to the flower lover, maintains that a garden is “the Purest of Humane pleasures.” Certainly all will agree that it is among the purest.

In the nature of things it can be such only by so close an association with the home as to be “part and parcel” of it, as they say in New England. And the more intimate this association the more nearly does the garden approximate the Baconian estimate that it is “the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man.”

There must be gardenless homes in these days, more’s the pity. But wherever the garden, meaning more particularly the garden of flowers, comes into human life the first thought of all should be its affinity with the home. Unfortunately, this is only too often the very last thought; worse yet, many go on to the end of their existence without realizing the supreme experience.

What is a flower garden? Doubtless some would say, if one may judge them by their works, that it is a highly decorative frame for the house,

J or a showy adjunct thereto; or again that it is a colorful possession the joy of which would be materially lessened were the effect not boldly planned for the eyes of the passerby, or a mere place for the growing of the flowers that one must have.

Now the true garden of flowers is a great deal more. It may be—sometimes it must needs be— merely a clump of lilies by the doorstep, a rose on ithe porch or a row of chrysanthemums hugging the house. If this means the establishment of a real relationship between the inside of the portal and the outside, there is a garden, and one worthy to be numbered among “the Purest of Humane pleasures.” Size matters not, nor design, nor the abundance of flowers.

So began the earliest American flower gardens —gardens that the Colonists made for themselves fn New England, in New York and in Virginia. From the home outward they began, at first not straying from the walls of the house. Gradually, as forest and redskin receded, flowers ventured forth into the created yard—but never so far that the garden seemed other than the integral part of the home that it should be.

The old Colonial rule—call it instinct if you will—is the only one worth while. And so simple it is that even a child may read it as he runs. Let the flower garden expand from the heart of the home outward; then you may be sure that you have made a right start.

Chapter II Flower Gardens Of Many Kinds

From the days of the ancients, there have been various kinds of gardens. And in this age of specialization there are more and more kinds as the years go by. Already the kinds are so many that life and purse would seldom be long enough to secure their possession, even were such a multiplicity of gardens to be desired.

The advantage of these numbers is that they offer infinite suggestion for the making of a garden along composite, as well as specialized, lines. A bit here and a bit there, molded into shape by personality, may be precisely the material needed to create a pleasance that asks to be called by no more definite name than the garden.

After all, taking the human race by and large, this is the best of the many kinds of gardens— just a garden and yet one thoroughly thought out in its relation to the house. A variation for every individual is possible, there being no limit to the changes to be rung. As for beauty, there is ample room for all that any one cares to put into it. Nor need such a garden be nondescript; if the borrowing and adapting of ideas is judicious, the garden will have a personal character—in nine cases out of ten better than a slavish reproduction of one of the endless number of kinds. It is better in point of appropriateness and better in point of enjoyment.

To borrow and adapt judiciously is relatively easy if common sense be kept in the foreground. Art matters less than good taste and need not seriously disturb the amateur so far as strict adherence to set rules, and all that, is concerned. These rules are for the professional makers of gardens bearing high-sounding names.

The more a garden is so broken up that the eye cannot grasp all at once, the more kinds may be drawn upon. At the end of the main path there is, perhaps, a stone bench backed by small evergreens; this from an Italian garden. A curved bypath discloses a little Japanese scheme, a bank of thyme is from a Shakspere garden, while an herb garden suggested the walk lined with burnet.

This sort of garden-making is always worth doing and the beauty of it is that the working out of the idea may be of gradual growth. On the other hand, a named garden is not worth while at all unless it is substantially what it purports to be. That means careful study, to the end that there may be consistency of design and materials. On top of the study will come much labor and, more likely than not, much expense.

Of the four kinds of gardens that are classed by national style rather than the plants grown, the Italian is the acme of formality; nothing is unordered. It is the Renaissance perfection of the ancient Roman idea of a garden that not only was symmetry itself but was a part of a larger scheme of symmetry as represented by the villa— using the word in its old sense of an estate rather than merely a house. The elaborate design bears a distinct relation to the house, yet is quite complete in itself. There are terraces—which may be of monumental proportions—if the opportunity presents itself—and much topiary work, ornamental stone and statuary. Pools and running water also figure prominently in it.

A garden sufficiently Italian to be so called is perfectly feasible on a small place, if it conforms to the architecture of the house and there is a sufficient slope to permit of three terraces. Modification may be quite extreme. Flower beds of set design and neatly edged, with gravel walks, are more important to the plan than lawn spaces. Trees should close it in on three sides, that isolation may bring out its individuality. Clipped hedges may be made to take the place of stone balustrades. The red cedar is a fair substitute for cypress, while very good reproductions of antique garden furnishings are comparatively inexpensive. With these two materials, in fact, a short path could be converted into what it would be permissible in the intimacy of home to name an Italian garden.

Few will care to carry consistency beyond this compromise; for the more one studies Italian gardens the more one inclines to the view that to the average American gardener some part is of greater value than the whole. Perhaps it is only a group of cypresses in the Villa Albani, Rome, that suggests how to plant some red cedars standing out against the sky. Or the plan of the Villa Lante, at Bagnaia, is just the thing from which to adapt a parterre design, or the view up the terraces to the palace at Villa d’Este, Tivoli, the solution of a sloping rear-yard problem, or the Hill Walk of the Boboli Gardens, Florence, the pattern of a smaller scheme with a modest gateway. None, in the making of gardens, need fear to look too high; perhaps the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as pictorially imagined, may furnish the very key to the planting of a cottage yard that is so hilly as to require a series of retaining walls quite close together.

French gardens have formality, too, but there are long vistas—which the Italian style does not call for, though they are not necessarily lacking. For these vistas there are avenues, sometimes with clipped trees; and there are broader stretches of water and more spouting fountains than in the gardens of Italy.

A reduction of the garden at Fontainebleau to very moderate proportions would provide an excellent model for a French garden. Here the square pool has four wide approaches and the surrounding flower beds are set in the turf. There is a good garden suggestion, too, in the “Isle of Love” at Chantilly; this for a short vista of flowers and water. Another, for box-lined parterres, will be found in the garden of the Grand Trianon, at Versailles, and still another, for a paved court, in the Orangery at the same place.

The English garden, when highly formal, is very apt to show traces of Italian or French influence. In its less grand estate it possesses a charm that neither of the others has—a certain atmosphere of the home. Beauty it has, often of an exquisitely reposeful sort that is lacking in Italy and France; but there is the feeling that the beauty is not so much for art as to live with and love by personal association. To bind it still more closely to the home, the bowling green, the tennis court or croquet ground may be made part of it, and it is a common practice to enclose it with a wall or clipped hedges to insure seclusion.

Where foreign copying is to be done, it is to English gardens that the American would better look in most cases; if he is able to appropriate their homely air, their restfulness and their seclusion he need not mind if his work is not scholastic.

Atmosphere rather than design being the distinguishing feature, the best way to make an English garden is to enclose—preferably with a wall of stone or brick—a plot laid out in a formal pattern. Whether the plot is exactly square is immaterial.

The walled garden is more laughed at than understood by Americans; they are prone to regard the barriers as an affront to liberty. Yet it is one of the most admirable of gardens—which scarcely can be sanctuary when exposed to the full view of the public. The walls do more than provide seclusion, however; they break the violence of chilling and withering blasts and keep out such undesirable visitors as dogs. They also make it possible to grow tender climbing roses and vines, as well as choice fruit.

The Japanese garden is the fourth great national type. As far from the Italian, French or English garden as the East is from the West, its art lies so much in the concealment of art that were it not for the architectural features it would seem as if nature were being imitated instead of adapted. This through the exercise of rigid laws that are not easy for the occidental mind to grasp. It lends itself very well indeed to many American requirements. It fits in with low rambling houses, or bungalows, where roofs are long and hang well over. It is most serviceable in the development of rocky grounds, especially where a small amount of water is at hand or easily obtainable. If a pedant chooses to call the resultant garden Japanesque rather than Japanese, let him.

There are hill and flat Japanese gardens. In the former, if there are not natural rises of ground, they are created, often with such cunning that the eye is deceived into seeing distance that does not

_[Diuuasag poja-uost ayy {0 amos jnqg squnj¢d dup fo quausojdua ayy inoypyim jn{ -1ynvag Ajbu1guvsjua aq upd fl pup * * * “a4njou fo aouvjquias D $1 uspavb ¥4I04 P,, exist. This idea is helped along not only by the size and shape of the hills and their relative positions, but by the planting of dwarf trees. For both types there are rough, intermediary and finished styles.

All are too complicated to be reproduced accurately by any save skilled Japanese gardeners, but single features are readily appropriated. Very frequently these are worth taking because of a meaning that, though distinctly oriental, may -be given an occidental turn. Thus there is a very pretty sentiment to the stones known as “guardian,” “perfect view,” ‘moon shadow” and “‘pedestal,”” to quote only a few of the names, and the “principal,” “perfection,” ‘‘out-stretching pine,” “setting sun’? and other trees—all placed by rules that are tradition. Whether one takes no more than the merest suggestion, any good pictures of Japanese gardens will be found profitable study.

A rose garden has a charm so rare that there is nothing comparable to it. Unfortunately it will always be for the few. On anything like a large and comprehensive scale it is a costly as well as difficult undertaking. Then again, excepting on a place of considerable size, it is a wasteful use of space as its glory is transient. To be thoroughly successful the hybrid perpetuals that bloom in June must be supplemented by enough hybrid teas to keep up a show of color until autumn, and the longest possible succession must be arranged in planting the climbers. Even then, pansies, verbenas or some of the creeping perennials, as ground covers, and lilies or other tall flowers will have to be relied on to piece out the season. The ground covers can stand for several years if the soil is very heavily and deeply fertilized at the start. Or there are the numerous so-called roses which properly enough might go in. Lavender, where it proves hardy, is very beautiful planted with China roses.

Better for the most a garden with roses, or else a little place apart—too unpretentious to be designated a rose garden. A great many of the choicest roses are not particularly decorative and may just as well be grown in rows on the edge of the kitchen garden—where they can be cut with long stems and in no fear of color robbery.

An iris or a phlox garden is a safer venture. And if stock is propagated for a few years before the definite planting, the expense need be very little; possibly nothing at all, if there are kind neighbors. Nor is there the great maintenance and renewal expense of a well-ordered rose garden.

The iris garden may be made a beautiful place the year round by using no other flowers. The bloom of Iris pumila, Iris cristata, the German, Spanish, English, Siberian and Japan irises and the blue and yellow flags will be continuous from April into July, but before and after some of the foliage will be attractive. If the rest of the planting be small evergreens, with a bit of water and some rocks, there will never be the scraggliness that a rose garden is bound to show at times. Unless it be the curious, but capricious, J. Susiana, reject the strange-colored irises. Choose the clear colors and not too many of them in one class, if the garden is not very large.

A phlox garden will start to bloom in April and so late as November there is likely to be a bit of flower color here and there. But all through the winter there will be the broad bronzed leaves of P. ovata and the lighter green of P. subulata, P. amoena and P. divaricata. These are April and May phloxes, but not all of them. Later come the tall P. suffruticosa and the taller P. paniculata.

Lilies, both the true and the false; primroses, for spring only; speedwells, pinks, bellflowers, daisies and mallows are also well adapted for named gardens.

It is less trouble to buy herbs nowadays than to grow them. Nevertheless a great many more would grow them if they realized the pleasure to be derived from an herb garden. This, indeed, may be made a most delightful retreat as well as a valuable kitchen adjunct. In foliage alone there are enough shades of green and gray to contrive all manner of pleasing pictures. And it is pleasant for the clothing to brush against mint, and burnet and other savories.

For flower color the common calendula, which is a very old pot herb, will give various yellow shades from early summer until well into the autumn. The blue of the common sage blossoms is very soft and pretty and there are the still softer tones of lavender and rosemary—herbs that unfortunately are very tender in the North. And some of the other subdued hues, such as the red of the flower heads of the burnet and the greenish yellows of the fennel and dill umbrellas, are grateful to the eye. Then there are the little golden buttons of the tansy, which should be in every herb garden because the fresh leaves laid on the pantry shelves will keep black ants away.

In the Dark Ages the monks had medicinal gardens that were agreeable to walk in, aside from their primary reason for being. A medicinal garden nowadays would scarcely sound right excepting as a reserved space in a botanic garden. Yet the garden of simples, which is the same thing, is a too-cherished memory of an age when life was less complicated to be wholly neglected where there is room for it as a special retreat. There would be no obligation, even on the part of a New England conscience, to go “‘simpling” in it; the flowers properly entering into it would make it a gay enough place in which to ramble for the sheer joy of beholding. Any of the “‘worts,” which are legion, may go into it, and there will be blossoms from the coltsfoot of March to the monkshood of October.

The rock garden, fairly common abroad but rare here, is in the narrow sense of alpine an endeavor to make the plants of the high mountains at home by approximating natural conditions,

When termed a moraine garden, a miniature slope of fine stones is made for alpine dwarfs that do not thrive well in pockets of soil. Broadly speaking, a rock garden is a semblance of nature, which may be no more than the mere planting of native flowers by existing rocks. One great advantage of it is that it need be only a yard square and still be what it pretends to be; there are many tiny ones in England. And it can be entrancingly beautiful without the employment of any plants but some of the “‘iron-clad” perennials.

A wall garden is not to be confused with a walled garden. It is any wall in the crevices of which are grown appropriate plants. The mortar may be knocked out here and there in an old wall, but it is better to make a dry one—that is to say, one in which the crevices are filled with earth for planting. It is a large or small undertaking, according to desire and circumstance; nothing could be simpler than a simple one.

‘Lhe water garden is a sufficiently expansive term to cover plants that like “wet feet’ as well as those that actually grow in the water; for that matter it may be made up of either, the water being the essential thing. As for pretentiousness, a tub of water sunk in the ground and a single water lily growing in it, with a bit of perennial forget-me-not flourishing in the adjacent moist soil, is a water garden that is not to be sneered at; the birds will tell you that by their actions, if they cannot in so many words.

A bog garden is a wet one, more or less faithfully reproducing boggy conditions. It is just the place for segregating some of the orchids, ferns and other native plants that otherwise are liable to perish in cultivation, or at best grow only halfheartedly. It may be also a peat garden, or just the moister section of one—the remainder to be higher land for rhododendrons, heather, lilies and other peat-loving plants.

Of what may be called sentimental gardens there are doubtless more kinds than will ever be numbered, because any one is likely to extend the list through purely personal promptings of the heart. The best for general recommendation is the garden of friendship. All of the plants in it, of course, are from friends or from seed sent by them; and it is astonishing to find how many are only too glad to contribute. Long-lived, hardy plants ought to be given the preference.

A garden of association might mean this, too; but a wise differentiation is a gathering together of plants—personally and through friends—that come from places of historical and literary interest. Shakspere, Bible and Virgil gardens are among the possible specializations, though all offer obstacles to completeness that few would find surmountable. Enough for most will be to visualize “Daffodils that come before the swallow dares” or some of the other easy references.

The name garden has occasional possibilities that have not begun to be recognized. Rose and Viclet may choose either the flower or the color for theirs. Daisy is perhaps not less fortunate in the variety of “day’s eye” flowers that extend over the entire season. And there is Lily, with glorious opportunities from May to September. If there be but contentment with one or two kinds of flowers, several other feminine names, and perhaps as many masculine ones, may be coupled with gardens. Is it too small a thing to bestow the name of Mary’s garden on a generous planting of “blue-eyed Mary” and “sweet Mary,” or Susan’s garden on a grouping of the two flowers known as “‘black-eyed Susan”? Surely there would be something in them to Mary or Susan that an acre of roses would lack—even though there were not a precise matching of eyes.

Color gardens are more dreamed of than realized. Yet they offer a most fascinating field that would not seem hedged in with trials and tribulations if the first thing to remember were not usually overlooked. It is this: there is no statute on the books requiring a pink garden, for example, to be all pink. How soon the eye would tire were there not the green of the leaves; and if the color why not a touch of white? The only rule is to have the name color dominant, and no more so than you fancy. White always is a refreshment and a bit of yellow warms up a blue garden. A red garden ought not to be too red, as this is a hot color in summer; use winter berries and evergreen foliage in generous measure, By skillful planting the garden may be four or five colors in succession. In that event, yellow is a warm color for spring.

The old-fashioned garden is a somewhat confused term. It may mean a formal Colonial garden or a garden having only the flowers of other days, with little or no color and planting order. Either interpretation will answer—in its place. But do not worry yourself to death trying to find out where the old-fashioned flowers begin and the new ones end; it is a hopeless task. If the garden looks old-fashioned, or Colonial, a few anachronisms will not matter a great deal.

There are also two kinds of wild gardens, real ones and crazy ones. The latter are the product of the pernicious habit of mixing various flower seeds together and scattering them broadcast to come up as best they may. The real kind is a bit of the wild brought to the home. It offers no end of attractive possibilities, especially where there is adjacent woodland and conditions may be adapted instead of being created.

Finally, there is the fruit garden—which first is a flower garden, yet seldom figuring in that light. Now that there are all manner of dwarf fruit trees, enchanting spring pictures are to be made. Though the fruit is highly decorative later, there are spaces where flowers may bloom all summer. In early spring the fruit garden may be brightened with various bulbs.

(May qa]

Chapter III Laying Out The Flower Garden

THE initial step toward laying out a flower garden is to make up your mind not as to the kind that you want but the kind that you ought to have. Although this sounds heart-breaking, it is not so bad after all; it is only a matter of adjusting the mental attitude.

Of course, the kind of garden that you ought to have is the one that is best in the circumstances. In the first place, as has already been said, it should bear a relationship to the house. This does not mean that a house wholly impossible, or only halfway bad, ought to have those qualities duplicated in the garden; nothing could be more senseless than that. It does mean that there should be a certain harmony, if not actual correspondence, of character. ‘True, there might easily be the sort of planning that would so isolate the garden as to shut it out completely from any picture of the house. This would satisfy the passerby, and your neighbor; but how about you? Do you not want to feel that there is a certain homogeneity of atmosphere? Well, you ought to if you do not. If the house is not right architecturally, strive to conceal its defects by beginning the garden there, so to speak. Sometimes a single vine or a few shrubs or evergreens will chasten architecture wonderfully, and at the same time serve to bridge the house with the garden.

An Italian villa would better have an Italian garden, a Georgian house a formal design of the English type, a rambling farmhouse an old-fashioned layout of no set form, a house built on rocky ground a rock garden, and so on. This is speaking broadly; in actual practice, so far as the average place of moderate size is concerned, the idea is not so much a garden that is technically accurate for its class as one that in its lines, or some distinguishing feature, suggests that class. Nor, as has previously been said, is there any need of its going by this, that or the other name; it may have a dominant Italian note in the broad view, as seen with the house, but at close range reveal such a variety of adapted touches that it can.be called only the garden.

There is no occasion to fear that this limitation of plans will be a serious barrier to the expression of individual preference; the combinations that can be worked out are endless. The real limitations enter when decision must further depend on climate, soil, exposure to sun and wind and whether the house is occupied at all seasons, not to mention the matter of time. All these things must be considered, and considered well.

LAYING OUT THE GARDEN 19

Time, that is to say the amount of leisure at one’s disposal, is of the utmost importance. It takes time not only to make a garden, but to maintain and enjoy it. The moment that the garden uses up more time than can be given to it comfortably, it gets beyond its province—play becomes work. And a flower garden is no place for drudgery. Figure out then how much time you can spend, comfortably, not merely during the season just in sight but for at least a few years to come; and cut your garden cloth accordingly.

Climate is safely disposed of only by the elimination of all but the really dependable flowers, remembering always that in some places hot, dry summers are as much of a problem as severely cold winters in others. Soil disadvantages can be remedied wherever expense does not stand in the way. Winds and the force of the summer sun are broken by the planting of shrubs and vines. Little or no sun is harder to get around, though the last resort of a shady garden is far from being one to be altogether deplored; sometimes such a garden is a place of genuine delight.

All this figuring out what is best to be done is prime mental sport for long winter evenings. Those are rare times for the planning of gardens— when the fire burns bright and you can sit and think, devise and revise, with the comfortable feeling that spring is still well in the future—that there will be no call to dig on the morrow.

Hurry, indeed, is the last thing to enter into the planning of the garden. Much has to be thought out, and thought out means threshed out until there is clean winnowing of the impractical from the practical.

Preliminaries out of the way, the paper stage of the game passes from memoranda into the definite form of a plan to scale. Blessings on the man who invented cross-ruled paper; with it laying out a garden is child’s play, even for the unmathematical mind. This paper comes in sheets, 17x14 inches, and is ruled in little squares that run thirty-six to the square inch. The squares may be called any convenient unit from a square foot up, and if one sheet of paper is not large enough two or more may be pasted together.

With a steel tape, if you can get hold of one, take measurements of the boundaries of the entire home grounds and the base lines of the house and any other buildings. Then get the distance of the house from the boundaries and locate by further measurements all existing roads, paths, trees, shrubs and borders. Having decided on your unit, transfer these measurements to the cross-ruled sheet and you have a plan of the place all ready for laying out the garden by exact scale. This plan would better settle only the location and size of the garden.