Manual of Gardening (Second Edition)
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Title: Manual of Gardening (Second Edition)
Author: L. H. Bailey
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9550]
Most recently updated: June 21, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANUAL OF GARDENING (SECOND EDITION) ***
Produced by by Steve Schulze and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
[Illustration]
Manual of Gardening
A PRACTICAL GUIDE
TO THE MAKING OF HOME GROUNDS AND THE GROWING OF FLOWERS, FRUITS, AND
VEGETABLES FOR HOME USE
by L. H. Bailey
SECOND EDITION
1910
Contents
EXPLANATION
CHAPTER I. THE POINT OF VIEW
_What a garden is_
CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL PLAN OR THEORY OF THE PLACE
_The plan of the grounds_
_The picture in the landscape_
_Birds; and cats_
_The planting is part of the design or picture_
_The flower-growing should be part of the design_
Defects in flower-growing
Lawn flower-beds
Flower-borders
The old-fashioned garden
Contents of the flower-borders
_The value of plants may lie in foliage and form rather than in bloom_
Odd and formal trees
Poplars and the like
Plant-forms
_Various specific examples_
An example
Another example
A third example
A small back yard
A city lot
General remarks
_Review_
CHAPTER III. EXECUTION OF SOME OF THE LANDSCAPE FEATURES
_The grading_
_The terrace_
_The bounding lines_
_Walks and drives_
The question of drainage, curbing, and gutters
The materials
_Making the borders_
_Making the lawn_
Preparing the ground
The kind of grass
When and how to sow the seed
Securing a firm sod
The mowing
Fall treatment
Spring treatment
Watering lawns
Sodding the lawn
A combination of sodding and seeding
Sowing with sod
Other ground covers
CHAPTER IV. THE HANDLING OF THE LAND
_The draining of the land_
_Trenching and subsoiling_
_Preparation of the surface_
_The saving of moisture_
_Hand tools for weeding and subsequent tillage and other hand work_
The hoe
Scarifiers
Hand-weeders
Trowels and their kind
Rollers
Markers
_Enriching the land_
CHAPTER V. THE HANDLING OF THE PLANTS
_Sowing the seeds_
_Propagating by cuttings_
Dormant stem-cuttings
Cuttings of roots
Green cuttings
Cuttings of leaves
General treatment
_Transplanting young seedlings_
_Transplanting established plants and trees_
Tub-plants
When to transplant
Depth to transplant
Making the rows straight
Cutting-back; filling
Removing very large trees
_Winter protection of plants_
_Pruning_
_Tree surgery and protection_
Tree guards
Mice and rabbits
Girdled trees
Repairing street trees
_The grafting of plants_
_Keeping records of the plantation_
_The storing of fruits and vegetables_
_The forcing of plants_
Coldframes
Hotbeds
Management of hotbeds
CHAPTER VI. PROTECTING PLANTS FROM THINGS THAT PREY ON THEM
_Screens and covers_
_Fumigating_
_Soaking tubers and seeds_
_Spraying_
_Insecticide spraying formulas_
_Fungicide spraying formulas_
_Treatment for some of the common insects_
_Treatment for some of the common plant diseases_
CHAPTER VII. THE GROWING OF THE ORNAMENTAL PLANTS—THE CLASSES OF
PLANTS, AND LISTS
_Planting for immediate effect_
_The use of “foliage” trees and shrubs_
_Windbreaks and screens_
_The making of hedges_
_The borders_
_The flower-beds_
Bedding effects
Plants for subtropical effects
_Aquatic and bog plants_
_Rockeries and alpine plants_
1. PLANTS FOR CARPET-BEDS
_Lists for carpet-beds_
2. THE ANNUAL PLANTS
_List of annuals by color of flowers_
_Useful annuals for edgings of beds and walks, and for ribbon-beds_
_Annuals that continue to bloom after frost_
_List of annuals suitable for bedding_ (_that is, for “mass-effects” of
color_)
_List of annuals by height_
_Distances for planting annuals_
3. HARDY HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS
_Perennial herbs suitable for lawn and “planting” effects_
_A brief seasonal flower-garden or border list of herbaceous
perennials_
_One hundred extra-hardy perennial herbs_
4. BULBS AND TUBERS
_Fall-planted bulbs_
_List of outdoor fall-planted bulbs for the North_
_Winter bulbs_
_Summer bulbs_
5. THE SHRUBBERY
_List of shrubbery plants for the North_
_Shrubs for the South_
6. CLIMBING PLANTS
_Annual herbaceous climbers_
_Perennial herbaceous climbers_
_Woody perennial climbers_
_Climbing roses_
7. TREES FOR LAWNS AND STREETS
_List of hardy deciduous trees for the North_
_Non-coniferous trees for the South_
8. CONIFEROUS EVERGREEN SHRUBS AND TREES
_List of shrubby conifers_
_Arboreous conifers_
_Conifers for the South_
9. WINDOW-GARDENS
_The window-box for outside effect_
_The inside window-garden, or “house plants”_
_Bulbs in the window-garden_
_Watering house plants_
_Hanging baskets_
_Aquarium_
CHAPTER VIII. THE GROWING OF THE ORNAMENTAL PLANTS—INSTRUCTIONS OF
PARTICULAR KINDS
Abutilons; agapanthus; alstremeria; amaryllis; anemone; aralia;
araucaria; auricula; azaleas; begonias; cactus; caladium; calceolaria;
calla; camellias; cannas; carnations; century plants; chrysanthemums;
cineraria; clematis; coleus; crocus; croton; cyclamen; dahlia; ferns;
freesia; fuchsia; geranium; gladiolus; gloxinia; grevillea; hollyhocks;
hyacinths; iris; lily; lily-of-the-valley; mignonette; moon-flowers;
narcissus; oleander; oxalis; palms; pandanus; pansy; pelargonium;
peony; phlox; primulas; rhododendrons; rose; smilax; stocks; sweet pea;
swainsona; tuberose; tulips; violet; wax plant.
CHAPTER IX. THE GROWING OF THE FRUIT PLANTS
_Dwarf fruit-trees_
_Age and size of trees_
_Pruning_
_Thinning the fruit_
_Washing and scrubbing the trees_
_Gathering and keeping fruit_
Almond; apples; apricot; blackberry; cherry; cranberry; currant;
dewberry; fig; gooseberry; grape; mulberry; nuts; orange; peach; pear;
plum; quince; raspberry; strawberry;
CHAPTER X. THE GROWING OF THE VEGETABLE PLANTS
_Vegetables for six_
_The classes of vegetables_
_The culture of the leading vegetables_
Asparagus; artichoke; artichoke; Jerusalem; bean; beet; broccoli;
brussels sprouts; cabbage; carrot; cauliflower; celeriac; celery;
chard; chicory; chervil; chives; collards; corn salad; corn; cress;
cucumber; dandelion; egg-plant; endive; garlic; horseradish; kale;
kohlrabi; leek; lettuce; mushroom; mustard; muskmelon; okra; onion;
parsley; parsnip; pea; pepper; potato; radish; rhubarb; salsify;
sea-kale; sorrel; spearmint; spinach; squash; sweet-potato; tomato;
turnips and rutabagas; watermelon.
CHAPTER XI. SEASONAL REMINDERS
For the North
For the South
INDEX
LIST OF PLATES
PLATE I. The open center.
PLATE II. The plan of the place.
PLATE III. Open-center treatment in a semi-tropical country.
PLATE IV. Subtropical bedding against a building. Caladiums, cannas,
abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and other large stuff, with
tuberous begonias and balsams between.
PLATE V. A subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of
_Pennisetum longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early
March.
PLATE VI. A tree that gives character to a place.
PLATE VII. Bedding with palms. If a bricked-up pit is made about the
porch, pot palms may be plunged in it in spring and tub conifers in
winter; and fall bulbs in tin cans (so that the receptacles will not
split with frost) may be plunged among the evergreens.
PLATE VIII. A well-planted entrance. Common trees and bushes, with
Boston ivy. on the post, and _Berberis Thunbergii_ in front.
PLATE IX. A rocky bank covered with permanent informal planting.
PLATE X. A shallow lawn pond, containing water-lilies, variegated sweet
flag, iris, and subtropical bedding at the rear; fountain covered with
parrot’s feather (_Myriophyllum proserpinacoides_).
PLATE XI. A back yard with summer house, and gardens beyond.
PLATE XII. A back yard with heavy flower-garden planting.
PLATE XIII. The pageant of summer. Gardens of C.W. Dowdeswell, England,
from a painting by Miss Parsons.
PLATE XIV. Virginia creeper screen, on an old fence, with wall-flowers
and hollyhocks in front.
PLATE XV. Scuppernong grape, the arbor vine of the South. This plate
shows the noted scuppernongs on Roanoke Island, of which the origin is
unknown, but which were of great size more than one hundred years ago.
PLATE XVI. A flower-garden of China asters, with border of one of the
dusty millers (_Centaurea_).
PLATE XVII. The peony. One of the most steadfast of garden flowers.
PLATE XVIII. Cornflower or bachelor’s button. _Centaurea Cyanus_.
PLATE XIX. Pyracantha in fruit. One of the best ornamental-fruited
plants for the middle and milder latitudes.
PLATE XX. A simple but effective window-box, containing geraniums,
petunias, verbenas, heliotrope, and vines.
PLATE XXI. The king of fruits. Newtown as grown in the Pacific country.
PLATE XXII. Wall-training of a pear tree.
PLATE XXIII. Cherry currant.
PLATE XXIV. Golden Bantam sweet corn.
PLATE XXV. The garden radish, grown in fall, of the usual spring sorts.
EXPLANATION
It has been my desire to reconstruct the two books, “Garden-Making” and
“Practical Garden-Book”; but inasmuch as these books have found a
constituency in their present form, it has seemed best to let them
stand as they are and to continue their publication as long as the
demand maintains itself, and to prepare a new work on gardening. This
new work I now offer as “A Manual of Gardening.” It is a combination
and revision of the main parts of the other two books, together with
much new material and the results of the experience of ten added years.
A book of this kind cannot be drawn wholly from one’s own practice,
unless it is designed to have a very restricted and local application.
Many of the best suggestions in such a book will have come from
correspondents, questioners, and those who enjoy talking about gardens;
and my situation has been such that these communications have come to
me freely. I have always tried, however, to test all such suggestions
by experience and to make them my own before offering them to my
reader. I must express my special obligation to those persons who
collaborated in the preparation of the other two books, and whose
contributions have been freely used in this one: to C.E. Hunn, a
gardener of long experience; Professor Ernest Walker, reared as a
commercial florist; Professor L.R. Taft and Professor F.A. Waugh, well
known for their studies and writings in horticultural subjects.
In making this book, I have had constantly in mind the home-maker
himself or herself rather than the professional gardener. It is of the
greatest importance that we attach many persons to the land; and I am
convinced that an interest in gardening will naturally take the place
of many desires that are much more difficult to gratify, and that lie
beyond the reach of the average man or woman.
It has been my good fortune to have seen amateur and commercial
gardening in all parts of the United States, and I have tried to
express something of this generality in the book; yet my experience, as
well as that of my original collaborators, is of the northeastern
states, and the book is therefore necessarily written from this region
as a base. One gardening book cannot be made to apply in its practice
in all parts of the United States and Canada unless its instructions
are so general as to be practically useless; but the principles and
points of view may have wider application. While I have tried to give
only the soundest and most tested advice, I cannot hope to have escaped
errors and shortcomings, and I shall be grateful to my reader if he
will advise me of mistakes or faults that he may discover. I shall
expect to use such information in the making of subsequent editions.
Of course an author cannot hold himself responsible for failures that
his reader may suffer. The statements in a book of this kind are in the
nature of advice, and it may or it may not apply in particular
conditions, and the success or failure is the result mostly of the
judgment and carefulness of the operator. I hope that no reader of a
gardening book will ever conceive the idea that reading a book and
following it literally will make him a gardener. He must always assume
his own risks, and this will be the first step in his personal
progress.
I should explain that the botanical nomenclature of this book is that
of the “Cyclopedia of American Horticulture,” unless otherwise stated.
The exceptions are the “trade names,” or those used by nurserymen and
seedsmen in the sale of their stock.
I should further explain the reason for omitting ligatures and using
such words as peony, spirea, dracena, cobea. As technical Latin
formularies, the compounds must of course be retained, as in _Pæonia
officinalis_, _Spiræa Thunbergi_, _Dracæna fragrans_, _Cobœa scandens_;
but as Anglicized words of common speech it is time to follow the
custom of general literature, in which the combinations æ and œ have
disappeared. This simplification was begun in the “Cyclopedia of
American Horticulture” and has been continued in other writings.
L. H. BAILEY.
ITHACA, NEW YORK,
January 20, 1910.
CHAPTER I
THE POINT OF VIEW
I. The open center. I. The open center.
Wherever there is soil, plants grow and produce their kind, and all
plants are interesting; when a person makes a choice as to what plants
he shall grow in any given place, he becomes a gardener or a farmer;
and if the conditions are such that he cannot make a choice, he may
adopt the plants that grow there by nature, and by making the most of
them may still be a gardener or a farmer in some degree.
Every family, therefore, may have a garden. If there is not a foot of
land, there are porches or windows. Wherever there is sunlight, plants
may be made to grow; and one plant in a tin-can may be a more helpful
and inspiring garden to some mind than a whole acre of lawn and flowers
may be to another.
The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily,
on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the
person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to
cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little.
In the vast majority of cases a person will be happier if he has no
rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with
the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the
plants that thrive chance not to be the ones that he planted, they are
plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.
We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but we are happier
when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty
pigweeds, growing and crowding in luxuriant abandon, may be a better
and more worthy object of affection than a bed of coleuses in which
every spark of life and spirit and individuality has been sheared out
and suppressed. The man who worries morning and night about the
dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions.
Each blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it shines in the
exuberant sunlight of the growing spring, and attracts the insects to
its bosom. Little children like the dandelions: why may not we? Love
the things nearest at hand; and love intensely. If I were to write a
motto over the gate of a garden, I should choose the remark that
Socrates is said to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market,
“How much there is in the world that I do not want!”
I verily believe that this paragraph I have just written is worth more
than all the advice with which I intend to cram the succeeding pages,
notwithstanding the fact that I have most assiduously extracted this
advice from various worthy but, happily, long-forgotten authors.
Happiness is a quality of a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the
anticipation of joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so
many books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all these
books have been good and useful. It would be ungrateful, at the least,
for the present writer to say otherwise; but books grow old, and the
advice becomes too familiar. The sentences need to be transposed and
the order of the chapters varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or,
to speak plainly, a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in every
decade, or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There has
been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks,—Gardiner &
Hepburn, M’Mahon, Cobbett—original, pungent, versatile
Cobbett!—Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers, Buist, and a dozen more,
each one a little richer because the others had been written. But even
the fact that all books pass into oblivion does not deter another hand
from making still another venture.
I expect, then, that every person who reads this book will make a
garden, or will try to make one; but if only tares grow where roses are
desired, I must remind the reader that at the outset I advised
pigweeds. The book, therefore, will suit everybody,—the experienced
gardener, because it will be a repetition of what he already knows; and
the novice, because it will apply as well to a garden of burdocks as of
onions.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. The ornamental burdock]
_What a garden is_.
A garden is the personal part of an estate, the area that is most
intimately associated with the private life of the home. Originally,
the garden was the area inside the inclosure or lines of fortification,
in distinction from the unprotected area or fields that lay beyond; and
this latter area was the particular domain of agriculture. This book
understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises
devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The
garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not
make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a
garden in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this
book declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings,
walks, drives, and fences, should be planted. What we shall
plant—whether sward, lilacs, thistles, cabbages, pears, chrysanthemums,
or tomatoes—we shall talk about as we proceed.
The only way to keep land perfectly unproductive is to keep it moving.
The moment the owner lets it alone, the planting has begun. In my own
garden, this first planting is of pigweeds. These may be followed, the
next year, by ragweeds, then by docks and thistles, with here and there
a start of clover and grass; and it all ends in June-grass and
dandelions.
Nature does not allow the land to remain bare and idle. Even the banks
where plaster and lath were dumped two or three years ago are now
luxuriant with burdocks and sweet clover; and yet persons who pass
those dumps every day say that they can grow nothing in their own yard
because the soil is so poor! Yet I venture that those same persons
furnish most of the pigweed seed that I use on my garden.
The lesson is that there is no soil—where a house would be built—so
poor that something worth while cannot be grown on it. If burdocks will
grow, something else will grow; or if nothing else will grow, then I
prefer burdocks to sand and rubbish.
The burdock is one of the most striking and decorative of plants, and a
good piece of it against a building or on a rough bank is just as
useful as many plants that cost money and are difficult to grow. I had
a good clump of burdock under my study window, and it was a great
comfort; but the man would persist in wanting to cut it down when he
mowed the lawn. When I remonstrated, he declared that it was nothing
but burdock; but I insisted that, so far from being burdock, it was
really Lappa major, since which time the plant and its offspring have
enjoyed his utmost respect. And I find that most of my friends reserve
their appreciation of a plant until they have learned its name and its
family connections.
The dump-place that I mentioned has a surface area of nearly one
hundred and fifty square feet, and I find that it has grown over two
hundred good plants of one kind or another this year. This is more than
my gardener accomplished on an equal area, with manure and water and a
man to help. The difference was that the plants on the dump wanted to
grow, and the imported plants in the garden did not want to grow. It
was the difference between a willing horse and a balky horse. If a
person wants to show his skill, he may choose the balky plant; but if
he wants fun and comfort in gardening, he would better choose the
willing one.
I have never been able to find out when the burdocks and mustard were
planted on the dump; and I am sure that they were never hoed or
watered. Nature practices a wonderfully rigid economy. For nearly half
the summer she even refused rain to the plants, but still they thrived;
yet I staid home from a vacation one summer that I might keep my plants
from dying. I have since learned that if the plants in my hardy borders
cannot take care of themselves for a time, they are little comfort to
me.
The joy of garden-making lies in the mental attitude and in the
sentiments.
CHAPTER II
THE GENERAL PLAN OR THEORY OF THE PLACE
Having now discussed the most essential elements of gardening, we may
give attention to such minor features as the actual way in which a
satisfying garden is to be planned and executed.
Speaking broadly, a person will get from a garden what he puts into it;
and it is of the first importance, therefore, that a clear conception
of the work be formulated at the outset. I do not mean to say that the
garden will always turn out what it was desired that it should be; but
the failure to turn out properly is usually some fault in the first
plan or some neglect in execution.
Sometimes the disappointment in an ornamental garden is a result of
confusion of ideas as to what a garden is for. One of my friends was
greatly disappointed on returning to his garden early in September to
find that it was not so full and floriferous as when he left it in
July. He had not learned the simple lesson that even a flower-garden
should exhibit the natural progress of the season. If the garden begins
to show ragged places and to decline in late August or early September,
it is what occurs in all surrounding vegetation. The year is maturing.
The garden ought to express the feeling of the different months. The
failing leaves and expended plants are therefore to be looked on, to
some extent at least, as the natural order and destiny of a good
garden.
These attributes are well exhibited in the vegetable-garden. In the
spring, the vegetable-garden is a model of neatness and precision. The
rows are straight. There are no missing plants. The earth is mellow and
fresh. Weeds are absent. One takes his friends to the garden, and he
makes pictures of it. By late June or early July, the plants have begun
to sprawl and to get out of shape. The bugs have taken some of them.
The rows are no longer trim and precise. The earth is hot and dry. The
weeds are making headway. By August and September, the garden has lost
its early regularity and freshness. The camera is put aside. The
visitors are not taken to it: the gardener prefers to go alone to find
the melon or the tomatoes, and he comes away as soon as he has secured
his product. Now, as a matter of fact, the garden has been going
through its regular seasonal growth. It is natural that it become
ragged. It is not necessary that weeds conquer it; but I suspect that
it would be a very poor garden, and certainly an uninteresting one, if
it retained the dress of childhood at the time when it should develop
the personalities of age.
There are two types of outdoor gardening in which the progress of the
season is not definitely expressed,—in the carpet-bedding kind, and in
the subtropical kind. I hope that my reader will get a clear
distinction in these matters, for it is exceedingly important. The
carpet-bedding gardening is the making of figure-beds in house-leeks
and achyranthes and coleus and sanitalia, and other things that can be
grown in compact masses and possibly sheared to keep them within place
and bounds; the reader sees these beds in perfection in some of the
parks and about florists’ establishments; he will understand at once
that they are not meant in any way to express the season, for the
difference between them in September and June is only that they may be
more perfect in September. The subtropical gardening (plates IV and V)
is the planting out of house-grown stuff, in order to produce given
effects, of such plants as palms, dracenas, crotons, caladiums,
papyrus, together with such luxuriant things as dahlias and cannas and
large ornamental grasses and castor beans; these plants are to produce
effects quite foreign to the expression of a northern landscape, and
they are usually at their best and are most luxuriant when overtaken by
the fall frosts.
Now, the home gardener usually relies on plants that more or less come
and go with the seasons. He pieces out and extends the season, to be
sure; but a garden with pansies, pinks, sweet william, roses, sweet
peas, petunias, marigolds, salpiglossis, sweet sultan, poppies,
zinnias, asters, cosmos, and the rest, is a progress-of-the-season
garden, nevertheless; and if it is a garden of herbaceous perennials,
it still more completely expresses the time-of-year.
My reader will now consider, perhaps, whether he would have his garden
accent and heighten his natural year from spring to fall, or whether he
desires to thrust into his year a feeling of another order of
vegetation. Either is allowable; but the gardener should distinguish at
the outset.
I wish to suggest to my reader, also, that it is possible for the
garden to retain some interest even in the winter months. I sometimes
question whether it is altogether wise to clear out the old garden
stems too completely and too smoothly in the fall, and thereby
obliterate every mark of it for the winter months; but however this may
be, there are two ways by which the garden year may be extended: by
planting things that bloom very late in fall and others that bloom very
early in spring; by using freely, in the backgrounds, of bushes and
trees that have interesting winter characters.
_The plan of the grounds_ (see Plate II).
II. The plan of the place. II. The plan of the place. The arrangement
of the property (which is in New York) is determined by an existing
woodland to the left or southeast of the house and a natural opening to
the southwest of the house. The house is colonial, and the entire
treatment is one of considerable simplicity. Wild or woodland gardens
have been developed to the right and left of the entrance, the latter
or entrance lawns being left severely simple and plain in their
treatment. To the rear of the house a turf terrace raised three steps
above the general grade of the lawn leads to a general lawn terminated
by a small garden exedra or teahouse with a fountain in its center, and
to two shrub gardens forming interesting and closed pockets of lawn.
The stable and vegetable gardens are located to the south of the house
in a natural opening in the woodland. The design is made by a
professional landscape architect.
One cannot expect satisfaction in the planting and developing of a home
area unless he has a clear conception of what is to be done. This
necessarily follows, since the pleasure that one derives from any
enterprise depends chiefly on the definiteness of his ideals and his
ability to develop them. The homemaker should develop his plan before
he attempts to develop his place. He must study the various
subdivisions in order that the premises may meet all his needs. He
should determine the locations of the leading features of the place and
the relative importance to be given to the various parts of it,—as of
the landscape parts, the ornamental areas, the vegetable-garden, and
the fruit plantation.
The details of the planting may be determined in part as the place
develops; it is only the structural features and purposes that need to
be determined beforehand in most small properties. The incidental
modifications that may be made in the planting from time to time keep
the interest alive and allow the planter to gratify his desire to
experiment with new plants and new methods.
It must be understood that I am now speaking of ordinary home grounds
which the home-maker desires to improve by himself. If the area is
large enough to present distinct landscape features, it is always best
to employ a landscape architect of recognized merit, in the same spirit
that one would employ an architect. The details, however, may even then
be filled in by the owner, if he is so inclined, following out the plan
that the landscape architect makes.
[Illustration: Fig. 2. Diagram of a back yard.]
It is desirable to have a definite plan on paper (drawn to scale) for
the location of the leading features of the place. These features are
the residence, the out-houses, the walks and drives, the service areas
(as clothes yards), the border planting, flower-garden,
vegetable-garden, and fruit-garden. It should not be expected that the
map plan can be followed in every detail, but it will serve as a
general guide; and if it is made on a large enough scale, the different
kinds of plants can be located in their proper positions, and a record
of the place be kept. It is nearly always unsatisfactory, for both
owner and designer, if a plan of the place is made without a personal
inspection of the area. Lines that look well on a map may not adjust
themselves readily to the varying contours of the place itself, and the
location of the features inside the grounds will depend also in a very
large measure on the objects that lie outside it. For example, all
interesting and bold views should be brought into the place, and all
unsightly objects in the immediate vicinity should be planted out.
A plan of a back yard of a narrow city lot is given in Fig. 2, showing
the heavy border planting of trees and shrubs, with the skirting border
of flowers. In the front are two large trees, that are desired for
shade. It will readily be seen from this plan how extensive the area
for flowers becomes when they are placed along such a devious border.
More color effect can be got from such an arrangement of the flowers
than could be secured if the whole area were planted to flower-beds.
[Illustration: Fig. 3. Plan of a rough area.]
A contour map plan of a very rough piece of ground is shown in Fig. 3.
The sides of the place are high, and it becomes necessary to carry a
walk through the middle area; and on either side of the front, it
skirts the banks. Such a plan is usually unsightly on paper, but may
nevertheless fit special cases very well. The plan is inserted here for
the purpose of illustrating the fact that a plan that will work on the
ground does not necessarily work on a map.
[Illustration: Fig. 4. Suggestion for a school-ground on a
four-corners.]
In charting a place, it is important to locate the points from which
the walks are to start, and at which they are to emerge from the
grounds. These two points are then joined by direct and simple curves;
and alongside the walks, especially in angles or bold curves, planting
may be inserted.
A suggestion for school premises on a four-corners, and which the
pupils enter from three directions, is made in Fig. 4. The two
playgrounds are separated by a broken group of bushes extending from
the building to the rear boundary; but, in general, the spaces are kept
open, and the heavy border-masses clothe the place and make it
home-like. The lineal extent of the group margins is astonishingly
large, and along all these margins flowers may be planted, if desired.
If there is only six feet between a schoolhouse and the fence, there is
still room for a border of shrubs. This border should be between the
walk and the fence,—on the very boundary,—not between the walk and the
building, for in the latter case the planting divides the premises and
weakens the effect. A space two feet wide will allow of an irregular
wall of bushes, if tall buildings do not cut out the light; and if the
area is one hundred feet long, thirty to fifty kinds of shrubs and
flowers can be grown to perfection, and the school-grounds will be
practically no smaller for the plantation.
One cannot make a plan of a place until he knows what he wants to do
with the property; and therefore we may devote the remainder of this
chapter to developing the idea in the layout of the premises rather
than to the details of map-making and planting.
Because I speak of the free treatment of garden spaces in this book it
must not be inferred that any reflection is intended on the “formal”
garden. There are many places in which the formal or “architect’s
garden” is much to be desired; but each of these cases should be
treated wholly by itself and be made a part of the architectural
setting of the place. These questions are outside the sphere of this
book. All formal gardens are properly individual studies.
All very special types of garden design are naturally excluded from a
book of this kind, such types, for example, as Japanese gardening.
Persons who desire to develop these specialties will secure the
services of persons who are skilled in them; and there are also books
and magazine articles to which they may go.
_The picture in the landscape_.
The deficiency in most home grounds is not so much that there is too
little planting of trees and shrubs as that this planting is
meaningless. Every yard should be a picture. That is, the area should
be set off from other areas, and it should have such a character that
the observer catches its entire effect and purpose without stopping to
analyze its parts. The yard should be one thing, one area, with every
feature contributing its part to one strong and homogeneous effect.
[Illustration: Fig 5. The common or nursery way of planting]
[Illustration: Fig. 6. The proper or pictorial type of planting]
These remarks will become concrete if the reader turns his eye to Figs.
5 and 6. The former represents a common type of planting of front
yards. The bushes and trees are scattered promiscuously over the area.
Such a yard has no purpose, no central idea. It shows plainly that the
planter had no constructive conception, no grasp of any design, and no
appreciation of the fundamental elements of the beauty of landscape.
Its only merit is the fact that trees and shrubs have been planted; and
this, to most minds, comprises the essence and sum of the ornamentation
of grounds. Every tree and bush is an individual alone, unattended,
disconnected from its environments, and, therefore, meaningless. Such a
yard is only a nursery.
The other plan (Fig. 6) is a picture. The eye catches its meaning at
once. The central idea is the residence, with a free and open
greensward in front of it The same trees and bushes that were scattered
haphazard over Fig. 5 are massed into a framework to give effectiveness
to the picture of home and comfort. This style of planting makes a
landscape, even though the area be no larger than a parlor. The other
style is only a collection of curious plants. The one has an instant
and abiding pictorial effect, which is restful and satisfying: the
observer exclaims, “What a beautiful home this is!” The other piques
one’s curiosity, obscures the residence, divides and distracts the
attention: the observer exclaims, “What excellent lilac bushes are
these!”
An inquiry into the causes of the unlike impressions that one receives
from a given landscape and from a painting of it explains the subject
admirably. One reason why the picture appeals to us more than the
landscape is because the picture is condensed, and the mind becomes
acquainted with its entire purpose at once, while the landscape is so
broad that the individual objects at first fix the attention, and it is
only by a process of synthesis that the unity of the landscape finally
becomes apparent. This is admirably illustrated in photographs. One of
the first surprises that the novice experiences in the use of the
camera is the discovery that very tame scenes become interesting and
often even spirited in the photograph. But there is something more than
mere condensation in this vitalizing and beautifying effect of the
photograph or the painting: individual objects are so much reduced that
they no longer appeal to us as distinct subjects, and however uncouth
they may be in the reality, they make no impression in the picture; the
thin and sere sward may appear rather like a closely shaven lawn or a
new-mown meadow. And again, the picture sets a limit to the scene; it
frames it, and thereby cuts off all extraneous and confusing or
irrelevant landscapes.
These remarks are illustrated in the aesthetics of landscape gardening.
It is the artist’s one desire to make pictures in the landscape. This
is done in two ways: by the form of plantations, and by the use of
vistas. He will throw his plantations into such positions that open and
yet more or less confined areas of greensward are presented to the
observer at various points. This picture-like opening is nearly or
quite devoid of small or individual objects, which usually destroy the
unity of such areas and are meaningless in themselves. A vista is a
narrow opening or view between plantations to a distant landscape. It
cuts up the broad horizon into portions that are readily cognizable. It
frames parts of the country-side. The verdurous sides of the planting
are the sides of the frame; the foreground is the bottom, and the sky
is the top. It is of the utmost importance that good views be left or
secured from the best windows of the house (not forgetting the kitchen
window); in fact, the placing of the house may often be determined by
the views that may be appropriated.
If a landscape is a picture, it must have a canvas. This canvas is the
greensward. Upon this, the artist paints with tree and bush and flower
as the painter does upon his canvas with brush and pigments. The
opportunity for artistic composition and design is nowhere so great as
in the landscape garden, because no other art has such a limitless
field for the expression of its emotions. It is not strange, if this be
true, that there have been few great landscape gardeners, and that,
falling short of art, the landscape gardener too often works in the
sphere of the artisan. There can be no rules for landscape gardening,
any more than there can be for painting or sculpture. The operator may
be taught how to hold the brush or strike the chisel or plant the tree,
but he remains an operator; the art is intellectual and emotional and
will not confine itself in precepts.
The making of a good and spacious lawn, then, is the very first
practical consideration in a landscape garden.
The lawn provided, the gardener conceives what is the dominant and
central feature in the place, and then throws the entire premises into
subordination to this feature. In home grounds this central feature is
the house. To scatter trees and bushes over the area defeats the
fundamental purpose of the place,—the purpose to make every part of the
grounds lead up to the home and to accentuate its homelikeness.
[Illustration: Fig. 7. A house]
A house must have a background if it is to become a home. A house that
stands on a bare plain or hill is a part of the universe, not a part of
a home. Recall the cozy little farm-house that is backed by a wood or
an orchard; then compare some pretentious structure that stands apart
from all planting. Yet how many are the farm-houses that stand as stark
and cold against the sky as if they were competing with the moon! We
would not believe it possible for a man to live in a house twenty-five
years and not, by accident, allow some tree to grow, were it not that
it is so!
[Illustration: Fig. 8 A home]
Of course these remarks about the lawn are meant for those countries
where greensward is the natural ground cover. In the South and in arid
countries, greensward is not the prevailing feature of the landscape,
and in these regions the landscape design may take on a wholly
different character, if the work is to be nature-like. We have not yet
developed other conceptions of landscape work to any perfect extent,
and we inject the English greensward treatment even into deserts. We
may look for the time when a brown landscape garden may be made in a
brown country, and it may be good art not to attempt a broad open
center in regions in which undergrowth rather than sod is the natural
ground cover. In parts of the United States we are developing a good
Spanish-American architecture, perhaps we may develop a recognized
comparable landscape treatment as an artistic expression.
_Birds; and cats_
The picture in the landscape is not complete without birds, and the
birds should comprise more species than English sparrows. If one is to
have birds on his premises, he must (1) attract them and (2) protect
them.
One attracts birds by providing places in which they may nest. The free
border plantings have distinct advantages in attracting chipping
sparrows, catbirds, and other species. The bluebirds, house wrens, and
martins may be attracted by boxes in which they can build.
One may attract birds by feeding them and supplying water. Suet for
woodpeckers and others, grain and crumbs for other kinds, and taking
care not to frighten or molest them, will soon win the confidence of
the birds. A slowly running or dripping fountain, with a good rim on
which they may perch, will also attract them, and it is no mean
enjoyment to watch the birds at bathing. Or, if one does not care to go
to the expense of a bird fountain, he may supply their wants by means
of a shallow dish of water set on the lawn.
The birds will need protection from cats. There is no more reason why
cats should roam at will and uncontrolled than that dogs or horses or
poultry should be allowed unlimited license. A cat away from home is a
trespasser and should be so treated. A person has no more right to
inflict a cat on a neighborhood than to inflict a goat or rabbits or
any other nuisance. All persons who keep cats should feel the same
responsibility for them that they feel for other property; and they
should be willing to forfeit their property right when they forfeit
their control. The cats not only destroy birds, but they break the
peace. The caterwauling at night will not be permitted in well-governed
communities any more than the shooting of fire-arms or vicious talking
will be allowed: all night-roaming cats should be gathered in, just as
stray dogs and tramps are provided for.
I do not dislike cats, but I desire to see them kept at home and within
control. If persons say that they cannot keep them on their own
premises, then these persons should not be allowed to have them. A bell
on the cat will prevent it from capturing old birds, and this may
answer a good purpose late in the season; but it will not stop the
robbing of nests or the taking of young birds, and here is where the
greatest havoc is wrought.
It is often asserted that cats must roam in order that rats and mice
may be reduced; but probably few house mice and few rats are got by
wandering cats; and, again, many cats are not mousers. There are other
ways of controlling rats and mice; or if cats are employed for this
purpose, see that they are restricted to the places where the house
rats and mice are to be found.
Many persons like squirrels about the place, but they cannot expect to
have both birds and squirrels unless very special precautions are
taken.
The English or house sparrow drives away the native birds, although he
is himself an attractive inhabitant in winter, particularly where
native birds are not resident. The English sparrow should be kept in
reduced numbers. This can be easily accomplished by poisoning them in
winter (when other birds are not endangered) with wheat soaked in
strychnine water. The contents of one of the eighth-ounce vials of
strychnine that may be secured at a drug store is added to sufficient
water to cover a quart of wheat. Let the wheat stand in the poison
water twenty-four to forty-eight hours (but not long enough for the
grains to sprout), then dry the wheat thoroughly. It cannot be
distinguished from ordinary wheat, and sparrows usually eat it freely,
particularly if they are in the habit of eating scattered grain and
crumbs. Of course, the greatest caution must be exercised that in the
use of such highly poisonous materials, accidents do not occur with
other animals or with human beings.
III. Open center treatment in a semi-tropical country. III. Open center
treatment in a semi-tropical country.
Illustration: The nursery or single-specimen type of planting in a
front yard
_The planting is part of the design or picture._
[Illustration: Fig. 10 A native fence-row] [Ilustration: Fig. 11 Birds
build their nests here]
If the reader catches the full meaning of these pages, he has acquired
some of the primary conceptions in landscape gardening. The suggestion
will grow upon him day by day; and if he is of an observing turn of
mind, he will find that this simple lesson will revolutionize his habit
of thought respecting the planting of grounds and the beauty of
landscapes. He will see that a bush or flower-bed that is no part of
any general purpose or design—that is, which does not contribute to the
making of a picture—might better never have been planted. For myself, I
would rather have a bare and open pasture than such a yard as that
shown in Fig. 9, even though it contained the choicest plants of every
land. The pasture would at least be plain and restful and
unpretentious; but the yard would be full of effort and fidget.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. A free-and-easy planting of things wild and
tame.]
Reduced to a single expression, all this means that the greatest
artistic value in planting lies in the effect of the mass, and not in
the individual plant. A mass has the greater value because it presents
a much greater range and variety of forms, colors, shades, and
textures, because it has sufficient extent or dimensions to add
structural character to a place, and because its features are so
continuous and so well blended that the mind is not distracted by
incidental and irrelevant ideas. Two pictures will illustrate all this.
Figures 10, 11 are pictures of natural copses. The former stretches
along a field and makes a lawn of a bit of meadow which lies in front
of it. The landscape has become so small and so well defined by this
bank of verdure that it has a familiar and personal feeling. The great,
bare, open meadows are too ill-defined and too extended to give any
domestic feeling; but here is a part of the meadow set off into an area
that one can compass with his affections.
These masses in Figs. 10, 11, and 12 have their own intrinsic merits,
as well as their office in defining a bit of nature. One is attracted
by the freedom of arrangement, the irregularity of sky-line, the bold
bays and promontories, and the infinite play of light and shade. The
observer is interested in each because it has character, or features,
that no other mass in all the world possesses. He knows that the birds
build their nests in the tangle and the rabbits find it a covert.
Now let the reader turn to Fig. 9, which is a picture of an “improved”
city yard. Here there is no structural outline to the planting, no
defining of the area, no continuous flow of the form and color. Every
bush is what every other one is or may be, and there are hundreds like
them in the same town. The birds shun them. Only the bugs find any
happiness in them. The place has no fundamental design or idea, no lawn
upon which a picture may be constructed. This yard is like a sentence
or a conversation in which every word is equally emphasized.
[Illustration: Fig. 13. An open treatment of a school-ground. More
trees might be placed in the area, if desired.]
In bold contrast with this yard is the open-center treatment in Fig.
13. Here there is pictorial effect; and there is opportunity along the
borders to distribute trees and shrubs that may be desired as
individual specimens.
[Illustration: Fig. 14. A rill much as nature made it.] [Illustration:
Fig. 15. A rill “improved,” so that it will not look “ragged” and
unkempt.] The motive that shears the trees also razes the copse, in
order that the gardener or “improver” may show his art. Compare Figs.
14 and 15. Many persons seem to fear that they will never be known to
the world unless they expend a great amount of muscle or do something
emphatic or spectacular; and their fears are usually well founded.
It is not enough that trees and bushes be planted in masses. They must
be kept in masses by letting them grow freely in a natural way. The
pruning-knife is the most inveterate enemy of shrubbery. Pictures 16
and 17 illustrate what I mean. The former represents a good group of
bushes so far as arrangement is concerned; but it has been ruined by
the shears. The attention of the observer is instantly arrested by the
individual bushes. Instead of one free and expressive object, there are
several stiff and expressionless ones. If the observer stops to
consider his own thoughts when he comes upon such a collection, he will
likely find himself counting the bushes; or, at least, he will be
making mental comparisons of the various bushes, and wondering why they
are not all sheared to be exactly alike. Figure 17 shows how the same
“artist” has treated two deutzias and a juniper. Much the same effect
could have been secured, and with much less trouble, by laying two
flour barrels end to end and standing a third one between them.
[Illustration: 16. The making of a good group, but spoiled by the
pruning shears.]
[Illustration: 17. The three guardsmen.] [Illustration: Fig. 18 A bit
of semi-rustic work built into a native growth] I must hasten to say
that I have not the slightest objection to the shearing of trees. The
only trouble is in calling the practice art and in putting the trees
where people must see them (unless they are part of a recognized
formal-garden design). If the operator simply calls the business
shearing, and puts the things where he and others who like them may see
them, objection could not be raised. Some persons like painted stones,
others iron bulldogs in the front yard and the word “welcome” worked
into the door-mat, and others like barbered trees. So long as these
likes are purely personal, it would seem to be better taste to put such
curiosities in the back yard, where the owner may admire them without
molestation
There is a persistent desire among workmen to shear and to trim: it
displays their industry. It is a great thing to be able to allow the
freedom of nature to remain. The artist often builds his structures
into a native planting (as in Fig. 18) rather than to trust himself to
produce a good result by planting on razed surfaces.
In this discussion, I have tried to enforce the importance of the open
center in non-formal home grounds in greensward regions. Of course this
does not mean that there may not be central planting in particular
cases where the conditions distinctly call for it nor that there may
not be trees on the lawn. If one has the placing of the trees, he may
see that they are not scattered aimlessly; but if good trees are
already growing on the place, it would be folly to think of removing
them merely because they are not in the best ideal positions; in such
case, it may be very necessary to adapt the treatment of the area to
the trees. The home-maker should always consider, also, the planting of
a few trees in such places as to shade and protect the residence: the
more closely they can be made a part of the general design or handling
of the place, the better the results will be.
_The flower-growing should be part of the design._
I do not mean to discourage the use of brilliant flowers and bright
foliage and striking forms of vegetation; but these things are never
primary considerations in a good domain. The structural elements of the
place are designed first. The flanking and bordering masses are then
planted. Finally the flowers and accessories are put in, as a house is
painted after it is built. Flowers appear to best advantage when seen
against a background of foliage, and they are then, also, an integral
part of the picture. The flower-garden, as such, should be at the rear
or side of a place, as all other personal appurtenances are; but
flowers and bright leaves may be freely scattered along the borders and
near the foliage masses.
It is a common saying that many persons have no love or appreciation of
flowers, but it is probably nearer to the truth to say that no person
is wholly lacking in this respect. Even those persons who declare that
they care nothing for flowers are generally deceived by their dislike
of flower-beds and the conventional methods of flower-growing. I know
many persons who stoutly deny any liking for flowers, but who,
nevertheless, are rejoiced with the blossoming of the orchards and the
purpling of the clover fields. The fault may not lie so much with the
persons themselves as with the methods of growing and displaying the
flowers.
Defects in flower-growing.
The greatest defect with our flower-growing is the stinginess of it. We
grow our flowers as if they were the choicest rarities, to be coddled
in a hotbed or under a bell-jar, and then to be exhibited as single
specimens in some little pinched and ridiculous hole cut in the turf,
or perched upon an ant-hill that some gardener has laboriously heaped
oh a lawn. Nature, on the other hand, grows many of her flowers in the
most luxurious abandon, and one can pick an armful without offense. She
grows her flowers in earnest, as a man grows a crop of corn. One can
revel in the color and the fragrance and be satisfied.
The next defect with our flower-growing is the flower-bed. Nature has
no time to make flower-bed designs: she is busy growing flowers. And,
then, if she were given to flower-beds, the whole effect would be lost,
for she could no longer be luxurious and wanton, and if a flower were
picked her whole scheme might be upset. Imagine a geranium-bed or a
coleus-bed, with its wonderful “design,” set out into a wood or in a
free and open landscape! Even the birds would laugh at it!
What I want to say is that we should grow flowers freely when we make a
flower-garden. We should have enough of them to make the effort worth
the while. I sympathize with the man who likes sunflowers. There are
enough of them to be worth looking at. They fill the eye. Now show this
man ten feet square of pinks or asters, or daisies, all growing free
and easy and he will tell you that he likes them. All this has a
particular application to the farmer, who is often said to dislike
flowers. He grows potatoes and buckwheat and weeds by the acre: two or
three unhappy pinks or geraniums are not enough to make an impression.
Lawn flower-beds.
[Illustration: Fig. 19 Hole-in-the-ground gardening] The easiest way to
spoil a good lawn is to put a flower-bed in it; and the most effective
way in which to show off flowers to the least advantage is to plant
them in a bed in the greensward. Flowers need a background. We do not
hang our pictures on fence-posts. If flowers are to be grown on a lawn,
let them be of the hardy kind, which can be naturalized in the sod and
which grow freely in the tall unmown grass; or else perennials of such
nature that they make attractive clumps by themselves. Lawns should be
free and generous, but the more they are cut up and worried with
trivial effects, the smaller and meaner they look.
[Illustration: 20. Worth paying admittance price to see!] But even if
we consider these lawn flower-beds wholly apart from their
surroundings, we must admit that they are at best unsatisfactory. It
generally amounts to this, that we have four months of sparse and
downcast vegetation, one month of limp and frost-bitten plants, and
seven months of bare earth (Fig 19) I am not now opposing the
carpet-beds which professional gardeners make in parks and other
museums. I like museums, and some of the carpet-beds and set pieces are
“fearfully and wonderfully made” (see Fig 20) I am directing my remarks
to those humble home-made flower-beds that are so common in lawns of
country and city homes alike. These beds are cut from the good fresh
turf, often in the most fantastic designs, and are filled with such
plants as the women of the place may be able to carry over in cellars
or in the window. The plants themselves may look very well in pots, but
when they are turned out of doors, they have a sorry time for a month
adapting themselves to the sun and winds, and it is generally well on
towards midsummer before they begin to cover the earth. During all
these weeks they have demanded more time and labor than would have been
needed to care for a plantation of much greater size and which would
have given flowers every day from the time the birds began to nest in
the spring until the last robin had flown in November.
[Illustration: Fig. 21 An artist’s flower border]
Flower-borders.
[Illustration: 22. Petunias against a background of osiers.]
[Illustration: 23. A sowing of flowers along a marginal planting.] We
should acquire the habit of speaking of the flower-border. The border
planting of which we have spoken sets bounds to the place, and makes it
one’s own. The person lives inside his place, not on it. Along these
borders, against groups, often by the corners of the residence or in
front of porches—these are places for flowers. Ten flowers against a
background are more effective than a hundred in the open yard.
I have asked a professional artist, Mr Mathews, to draw me the kind of
a flower-bed that he likes. It is shown in Fig. 21. It is a border,—a
strip of land two or three feet wide along a fence. This is the place
where pigweeds usually grow. Here he has planted marigolds, gladiolus,
golden rod, wild asters, China asters, and—best of all—hollyhocks. Any
one would like that flower-garden It has some of that local and
indefinable charm that always attaches to an “old-fashioned garden”
with its medley of form and color Nearly every yard has some such strip
of land along a rear walk or fence or against a building It is the
easiest thing to plant it,—ever so much easier than digging the
characterless geranium bed into the center of an inoffensive lawn. The
suggestions are carried further in 22 to 25.
[Illustration: Fig. 24. An open back yard. Flowers may be thrown in
freely along the borders, but they would spoil the lawn if placed in
its center.] [Illustration: Fig. 25. A flower garden at the rear or one
side of the place.]
The old-fashioned garden.
Speaking of the old-fashioned garden recalls one of William Falconer’s
excellent paragraphs (“Gardening,” November 15, 1897, p. 75): “We tried
it in Schenley Park this year. We needed a handy dumping ground, and
hit on the head of a deep ravine between two woods; into it we dumped
hundreds upon hundreds of wagon loads of rock and clay, filling it near
to the top, then surfaced it with good soil. Here we planted some
shrubs, and broadcast among them set out scarlet poppies,
eschscholtzias, dwarf nasturtiums, snapdragons, pansies, marigolds, and
all manner of hardy herbaceous plants, having enough of each sort to
make a mass of its kind and color, and the effect was fine. In the
middle was a plantation of hundreds of clumps of Japan and German
irises interplanted, thence succeeded by thousands of gladioli, and
banded with montbretias, from which we had flowers till frost. The
steep face of this hill was graded a little and a series of winding
stone steps set into it, making the descent into the hollow quite easy;
the stones were the rough uneven slabs secured in blasting the rocks
when grading in other parts of the park, and both along outer edges of
the steps and the sides of the upper walk a wide belt of moss pink was
planted; and the banks all about were planted with shrubs, vines, wild
roses, columbines, and other plants. More cameras and kodaks were
leveled by visitors at this piece of gardening than at any other spot
in the park, and still we had acres of painted summer beds.”
Contents of the flower-borders.
There is no prescribed rule as to what one should put into these
informal flower-borders. Put in them the plants you like. Perhaps the
greater part of them should be perennials that come up of themselves
every spring, and that are hardy and reliable. Wild flowers are
particularly effective. Every one knows that many of the native herbs
of woods and glades are more attractive than some of the most prized
garden flowers. The greater part of these native flowers grow readily
in cultivation, sometimes even in places which, in soil and exposure,
are much unlike their native haunts. Many of them make thickened roots,
and they may be safely transplanted at any time after the flowers have
passed. To most persons the wild flowers are less known than many
exotics that have smaller merit, and the extension of cultivation is
constantly tending to annihilate them. Here, then, in the informal
flower-border, is an opportunity to rescue them. Then one may sow in
freely of easy-growing annuals, as marigolds, China asters, petunias
and phloxes, and sweet peas.
[Illustration: 26. Making the most of a rock.] One of the advantages of
these borders lying at the boundary is that they are always ready to
receive more plants, unless they are full. That is, their symmetry is
not marred if some plants are pulled out and others are put in. And if
the weeds now and then get a start, very little harm is done. Such a
border half full of weeds is handsomer than the average
hole-in-the-lawn geranium bed. An ample border may receive wild plants
every month in the year when the frost is out of the ground. Plants are
dug in the woods or fields, whenever one is on an excursion, even if in
July. The tops are cut off, the roots kept moist until they are placed
in the border; most of these much-abused plants will grow. To be sure,
one will secure some weeds; but then, the weeds are a part of the
collection! Of course, some plants will resent this treatment, but the
border may be a happy family, and be all the better and more personal
because it is the result of moments of relaxation. Such a border has
something new and interesting every month of the growing season; and
even in the winter the tall clumps of grasses and aster-stems hold
their banners above the snow and are a source of delight to every
frolicsome bevy of snowbirds.
I have spoken of a weedland to suggest how simple and easy a thing it
is to make an attractive mass-plantation. One may make the most of a
rock (Fig. 26) or bank, or other undesirable feature of the place. Dig
up the ground and make it rich, and then set plants in it. You will not
get it to suit you the first year, and perhaps not the second or the
third; you can always pull out plants and put more in. I should not
want a lawn-garden so perfect that I could not change it in some
character each year; I should lose interest in it.
It must not be understood that I am speaking only for mixed borders. On
the contrary, it is much better in most cases that each border or bed
be dominated by the expression of one kind of flower or bush. In one
place a person may desire a wild aster effect, or a petunia effect, or
a larkspur effect, or a rhododendron effect; or it may be desirable to
run heavily to strong foliage effects in one direction and to light
flower effects in another. The mixed border is rather more a
flower-garden idea than a landscape idea; when it shall be desirable to
emphasize the one and when the other, cannot be set down in a book.
_The value of plants may lie in foliage and form rather than in bloom._
[Illustration: 27. The plant-form in a perennial salvia.] What kinds of
shrubs and flowers to plant is a wholly secondary and largely a
personal consideration. The main plantings are made up of hardy and
vigorous species; then the things that you like are added. There is
endless choice in the species, but the arrangement or disposition of
the plants is far more important than the kinds; and the foliage and
form of the plant are usually of more importance than its bloom.
The appreciation of foliage effects in the landscape is a higher type
of feeling than the desire for mere color. Flowers are transitory, but
foliage and plant forms are abiding. The common roses have very little
value for landscape planting because the foliage and habit of the
rose-bush are not attractive, the leaves are inveterately attacked by
bugs, and the blossoms are fleeting. Some of the wild roses and the
Japanese _Rosa rugosa_, however, have distinct merit for mass effects.
Even the common flowers, as marigold, zinnias, and gaillardias, are
interesting as plant forms long before they come into bloom. To many
persons the most satisfying epoch in the garden is that preceding the
bloom, for the habits and stature of the plants are then unobscured.
The early stages of lilies, daffodils, and all perennials are most
interesting; and one never appreciates a garden until he realizes that
this is so.
[Illustration: 28. Funkia, or day-lily. Where lies the chief
interest,--in the plant-form or in the bloom?] [Illustration: 29. A
large-leaved nicotiana.] Now let the reader, with these suggestions in
mind, observe for one week the plant-forms in the humble herbs that he
meets, whether these herbs are strong garden plants or the striking
sculpturing of mulleins, burdocks, and jimson-weed. Figures 27 to 31
will be suggestive.
Wild bushes are nearly always attractive in form and habit when planted
in borders and groups. They improve in appearance under cultivation
because they are given a better chance to grow. In wild nature there is
such fierce struggle for existence that plants usually grow to few or
single stems, and they are sparse and scraggly in form; but once given
all the room they want and a good soil, they become luxurious, full,
and comely. In most home grounds in the country the body of the
planting may be very effectively composed of bushes taken from the
adjacent woods and fields. The masses may then be enlivened by the
addition here and there of cultivated bushes, and the planting of
flowers and herbs about the borders. It is not essential that one know
the names of these wild bushes, although a knowledge of their botanical
kinships will add greatly to the pleasure of growing them. Neither will
they look common when transferred to the lawn. There are not many
persons who know even the commonest wild bushes intimately, and the
things change so much in looks when removed to rich ground that few
home-makers recognize them.
[Illustration: 30. The awkward century plant that has been laboriously
carried over winter year by year in the cellar: compare with other
plants here shown as to its value as a lawn subject.]
[Illustration: Fig. 31. Making a picture with rhubarb.]
Odd and formal trees.
[Illustration: Fig 32. A weeping tree at one side of the grounds and
supported by a background.] It is but a corollary of this discussion to
say that plants which are simply odd or grotesque or unusual should be
used with the greatest caution, for they introduce extraneous and
jarring effects. They are little in sympathy with a landscape garden.
An artist would not care to paint an evergreen that is sheared into
some grotesque shape. It is only curious, and shows what a man with
plenty of time and long pruning shears can accomplish. A weeping tree
(particularly of a small-growing species) is usually seen to best
advantage when it stands against a group or mass of foliage (Fig. 32),
as a promontory, adding zest and spirit to the border; it then has
relation with the place.
This leads me to speak of the planting of the Lombardy poplar, which
may be taken as a type of the formal tree, and as an illustration of
what I mean to express. Its chief merits to the average planter are the
quickness of its growth and the readiness with which it multiplies by
sprouts. But in the North it is likely to be a short-lived tree, it
suffers from storms, and it has few really useful qualities. It may be
used to some advantage in windbreaks for peach orchards and other
short-lived plantations; but after a few years a screen of Lombardies
begins to fail, and the habit of suckering from the root adds to its
undesirable features. For shade it has little merit, and for timber
none. Persons like it because it is striking, and this, in an artistic
sense, is its gravest fault. It is unlike anything else in our
landscape, and does not fit into our scenery well. A row of Lombardies
along a roadside is like a row of exclamation points!
IV. Subtropical bedding against a building. Caladiums, cannas,
abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and other large stuff, with
tuberous begonias and balsams between. IV. Subtropical bedding against
a building. Caladiums, cannas, abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and
other large stuff, with tuberous begonias and balsams between.
But the Lombardy can often be used to good effect as one factor in a
group of trees, where its spire-like shape, towering above the
surrounding foliage, may lend a spirited charm to the landscape. It
combines well in such groups if it stands in visual nearness to
chimneys or other tall formal objects. Then it gives a sort of
architectural finish and spirit to a group; but the effect is generally
lessened, if not altogether spoiled, in small places, if more than one
Lombardy is in view. One or two specimens may often be used to give
vigor to heavy plantations about low buildings, and the effect is
generally best if they are seen beyond or at the rear of the building.
Note the use that the artist has made of them in the backgrounds in
Figs. 12, 13, and 43.
Poplars and the like.
Another defect in common ornamental planting, which is well illustrated
in the use of poplars, is the desire for plants merely because they
grow rapidly. A very rapid-growing tree nearly always produces cheap
effects. This is well illustrated in the common planting of willows and
poplars about summer places or lake shores. Their effect is almost
wholly one of thinness and temporariness. There is little that suggests
strength or durability in willows and poplars, and for this reason they
should usually be employed as minor or secondary features in ornamental
or home grounds. When quick results are desired, nothing is better to
plant than these trees; but better trees, as maples, oaks, or elms,
should be planted with them, and the poplars and willows should be
removed as rapidly as the other species begin to afford protection.
When the plantation finally assumes its permanent characters, a few of
the remaining poplars and willows, judiciously left, may afford very
excellent effects; but no one who has an artist’s feeling would be
content to construct the framework of his place of these rapid-growing
and soft-wooded trees.
[Illustration: Fig. 33. A spring expression worth securing. Catkins of
the small poplar.] [Illustration: Fig. 34. Plant-form in
cherries.--Reine Hortense.] I have said that the legitimate use of
poplars in ornamental grounds is in the production of minor or
secondary effects. As a rule, they are less adapted to isolated
planting as specimen trees than to using in composition,—that is, as
parts of general groups of trees, where their characters serve to break
the monotony of heavier forms and heavier foliage. The poplars are gay
trees, as a rule, especially those, like the aspens, that have a
trembling foliage. Their leaves are bright and the tree-tops are thin.
The common aspen or “popple,” _Populus tremuloides_, of our woods, is a
meritorious little tree for certain effects. Its dangling catkins (Fig.
33), light, dancing foliage, and silver-gray limbs, are always
cheering, and its autumn color is one of the purest golden-yellows of
our landscape. It is good to see a tree of it standing out in front of
a group of maples or evergreens.
Plant-forms.
Before one attains to great sensitiveness in the appreciation of
gardens, he learns to distinguish plants by their forms. This is
particularly true for trees and shrubs. Each species has its own
“expression,” which is determined by the size that is natural to it,
mode of branching, form of top, twig characters, bark characters,
foliage characters, and to some extent its flower and fruit characters.
It is a useful practice for one to train his eye by learning the
difference in expression of the trees of different varieties of
cherries or pears or apples or other fruits, if he has access to a
plantation of them. The differences in cherries and pears are very
marked (Figs. 34-36). He may also contrast and compare carefully the
kinds of any tree or shrub of which there are two or three species in
the neighborhood, learning to distinguish them without close
examination; as the sugar maple, red maple, soft maple, and Norway
maple (if it is planted); the white or American elm, the cork elm, the
slippery elm, the planted European elms; the aspen, large-toothed
poplar, cottonwood, balm of gilead, Carolina poplar, Lombardy poplar;
the main species of oaks; the hickories; and the like.
[Illustration: Fig. 35. Morello cherry.] [Illustration: Fig. 36. May
Duke cherry.] It will not be long before the observer learns that many
of the tree and shrub characters are most marked in winter; and he will
begin unconsciously to add the winter to his year.
_Various specific examples_.
The foregoing remarks will mean more if the reader is shown some
concrete examples. I have chosen a few cases, not because they are the
best, or even because they are always good enough for models, but
because they lie in my way and illustrate what I desire to teach.
A front yard example.
We will first look at a very ordinary front yard. It contained no
plants, except a pear tree standing near the corner of the house. Four
years later sees the yard as shown in Fig. 37. An exochorda is the
large bush in the very foreground, and the porch foundation is screened
and a border is thereby given to the lawn. The length of this planting
from end to end is about fourteen feet, with a projection towards the
front on the left of ten feet. In the bay at the base of this
projection the planting is only two feet wide or deep, and from here it
gradually swings out to the steps, eight feet wide. The prominent
large-leaved plant near the steps is a bramble, _Rubus odoratus_, very
common in the neighborhood, and it is a choice plant for decorative
planting, when it is kept under control. The plants in this border in
front of the porch are all from the wild, and comprise a prickly ash,
several plants of two wild osiers or dogwoods, a spice bush, rose, wild
sunflowers and asters and golden-rods. The promontory at the left is a
more ambitious but less effective mass. It contains an exochorda, a
reed, variegated elder, sacaline, variegated dogwood, tansy, and a
young tree of wild crab. At the rear of the plantation, next the house,
one sees the pear tree. The best single part of the planting is the
reed (_Arundo Donax_) overtopping the exochorda. The photograph was
taken early in summer, before the reed had become conspicuous.
[Illustration: 37. The planting in a simple front yard.]
A ground plan of this planting is shown in Fig. 38. At A is the walk
and B the steps. An opening at D serves as a passage. The main
planting, in front of the porch, fourteen feet long, received twelve
plants, some of which have now spread into large clumps. At 1 is a
large bush of osier, _Cornus Baileyi_, one of the best red-stemmed
bushes. At 2 is a mass of _Rubus odoratus_; at 5 asters and
golden-rods; at 3 a clump of wild sunflowers. The projecting planting
on the left comprises about ten plants, of which 4 is exochorda, 6 is
arundo or reed, at the back of which is a large clump of sacaline, and
7 is a variegated-leaved elder.
[Illustration: Fig. 38. Plan of the planting shown in Fig. 37.]
[Illustration: Fig. 39. Diagram of a back-yard planting. 50 x 90 feet.]
Another example.
[Illustration: Fig. 40. The beginning of a landscape garden.]
[Illustration: Fig. 41. The result in five years.]
A back yard is shown in Fig. 39. The owner wanted a tennis court, and
the yard is so small as not to allow of wide planting at the borders.
However, something could be done. On the left is a weedland border,
which formed the basis of the discussion of wild plants on page 35. In
the first place, a good lawn was made. In the second place, no walks or
drives were laid in the area. The drive for grocers’ wagons and coal is
seen in the rear, ninety feet from the house. From I to J is the
weedland, separating the area from the neighbor’s premises. Near I is a
clump of roses. At K is a large bunch of golden-rods. H marks a clump
of yucca. G is a cabin, covered with vines on the front. From G to F is
an irregular border, about six feet wide, containing barberries,
forsythias, wild elder, and other bushes. D E is a screen of Russian
mulberry, setting off the clothes yard from the front lawn. Near the
back porch, at the end of the screen, is an arbor covered with wild
grapes, making a play-house for the children. A clump of lilacs stands
at A. At B is a vine-covered screen, serving as a hammock support. The
lawn made and the planting done, it was next necessary to lay the
walks. These are wholly informal affairs, made by sinking a plank ten
inches wide into the ground to a level with the sod. The border
plantings of this yard are too straight and regular for the most
artistic results, but such was necessary in order not to encroach upon
the central space. Yet the reader will no doubt agree that this yard is
much better than it could be made by any system of scattered and
spotted planting. Let him imagine how a glowing carpet-bed would look
set down in the center of this lawn!
A third example.
[Illustration: Fig. 42. A meaningless back-yard planting, and an
unnecessary drive.] [Illustration: Fig. 43. Suggestions for improving
Fig. 42.]
The making of a landscape picture is well illustrated in Figs. 40, 41.
The former shows a small clay field (seventy-five feet wide, and three
hundred feet deep), with a barn at the rear. In front of the barn is a
screen of willows. The observer is looking from the dwelling-house. The
area has been plowed and seeded for a lawn. The operator has then
marked out a devious line upon either border with a hoe handle, and all
the space between these borders has been gone over with a garden roller
to mark the area of the desired greensward.
The borders are now planted with a variety of small trees, bushes, and
herbs. Five years later the view shown in Fig. 41 was taken.
A small back yard.
A back yard is shown in Fig. 42. It is approximately sixty feet square.
At present it contains a drive, which is unnecessary, expensive to keep
in repair, and destructive of any attempt to make a picture of the
area. The place could be improved by planting it somewhat after the
manner of Fig. 43.
V. A subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of _Pennisetum
longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early March. V. A
subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of _Pennisetum
longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early March.
A city lot.
[Illustration: Fig. 44. Present outline of a city back yard, desired to
be planted.]
A plan of a city lot is given in Fig. 44. The area is fifty by one
hundred, and the house occupies the greater part of the width. It is
level, but the surrounding land is higher, resulting in a sharp
terrace, three or four feet high, on the rear, E D. This terrace
vanishes at C on the right, but extends nearly the whole length of the
other side, gradually diminishing as it approaches A. There is a
terrace two feet high extending from A to B, along the front. Beyond
the line E D is the rear of an establishment which it is desired to
hide. Since the terraces set definite borders to this little place, it
is desirable to plant the boundaries rather heavily. If the adjoining
lawns were on the same level, or if the neighbors would allow one area
to be merged into the other by pleasant slopes, the three yards might
be made into one picture; but the place must remain isolated.
There are three problems of structural planting in the place: to
provide a cover or screen at the rear; to provide lower border masses
on the side terraces; to plant next the foundations of the house. Aside
from these problems, the grower is entitled to have a certain number of
specimen plants, if he has particular liking for given types, but these
specimens must be planted in some relation to the structural masses,
and not in the middle of the lawn.
The owner desired a mixed planting, for variety. The following shrubs
were actually selected and planted. The place is in central New York:—
_Shrubs for the tall background_
2 Barberry, _Berberis vulgaris_ and var. _purpurea_.
1 Cornus Mas.
2 Tall deutzias.
3 Lilacs.
2 Mock oranges, _Philadelphus grandiflorus_ and _P. coronarius_.
2 Variegated elders.
2 Eleagnus, _Elœagnus hortensis_ and _E. longipes_.
1 Exochorda.
2 Hibiscuses.
Privet.
3 Viburnums.
1 Snowball.
1 Tartarian honeysuckle.
1 Silver Bell, _Halesia tetraptera_.
[Illustration: Fig. 45. The planting of the terrace in Fig. 44.]
These were planted on the sloping bank of the terrace, from E to D. The
terrace has an incline, or width, of about three feet. Figure 45 shows
this terrace after the planting was completed, looking from the point
C.
_Shrubs of medium size, suitable for side plantings and groups in the
foregoing example_
3 Barberries, _Berberis Thunbergii_.
3 Osier dogwoods, variegated.
2 Japanese quinces, _Cydonia Japonica_ and _C. Maulei_.
4 Tall deutzias.
1 Variegated elder.
7 Weigelas, assorted colors.
1 Rhodotypos.
9 Spireas of medium growth, assorted.
1 Rubus odoratus.
1 Lonicera fragrantissima.
[Illustration: Fig. 46. Said to have been planted.]
Most of these shrubs were planted in a border two feet wide, extending
from B to C D, the planting beginning about ten feet back from the
street. Some of them were placed on the terrace at the left, extending
from E one-fourth of the distance to A. The plants were set about two
feet apart. A strong clump was placed at N to screen the back yard. In
this back yard a few small fruit trees and a strawberry bed were
planted.
_Low informal shrubs for front of porch and banking against house_
3 Deutzia gracilis.
6 Kerrias, green and variegated.
3 Daphne Mezereum.
3 Lonicera Halliana.
3 Rubus phœnicolasius.
3 Symphoricarpus vulgaris.
4 Mahonias.
1 Ribes aureum.
1 Ribes sanguineum.
1 Rubus cratægifolius.
1 Rubus fruticosus var. laciniatus.
[Illustration: Fig. 47. An area well filled. Compare Fig. 46.]
These bushes were planted against the front of the house (a porch on a
high foundation extends to the right from O), from the walk around to
P, and a few of them were placed at the rear of the house.
_Specimen shrubs for mere ornament, for this place_
Azalea.
Rhododendron.
Rose.
2 Hydrangeas.
1 Snowball.
1 each Forsythia suspensa and F. viridissima.
2 Flowering almonds.
These were planted in conspicuous places here and there against the
other masses.
Here are one hundred excellent and interesting bushes planted in a yard
only fifty feet wide and one hundred feet deep, and yet the place has
as much room in it as it had before. There is abundant opportunity
along the borders for dropping in cannas, dahlias, hollyhocks, asters,
geraniums, coleuses, and other brilliant plants. The bushes will soon
begin to crowd, to be sure, but a mass is wanted, and the narrowness of
the plantations will allow each bush to develop itself laterally to
perfection. If the borders become too thick, however, it is an easy
matter to remove some of the bushes; but they probably will not.
Picture the color and variety and life in that little yard. And if a
pigweed now and then gets a start in the border, it would do no harm to
let it alone: it belongs there! Then picture the same area filled with
disconnected, spotty, dyspeptic, and unspirited flower-beds and rose
bushes!
Various examples.
[Illustration: Fig. 48. The screening of the tennis-screen.]
[Illustration: Fig. 49. At the bottom of the clothes-post.]
Strong and bare foundations should be relieved by heavy planting. Fill
the corners with snow-drifts of foliage. Plant with a free hand, as if
you meant it (compare Figs. 46 and 47). The corner by the steps is a
perennial source of bad temper. The lawn-mower will not touch it, and
the grass has to be cut with a butcher-knife. If nothing else comes to
hand, let a burdock grow in it (Fig. 1).
The tennis-screen may be relieved by a background (Fig. 48), and a
clump of ribbon-grass or something else is out of the way against a
post (Fig. 49).
Excellent mass effects may be secured by cutting well-established
plants of sumac, ailanthus, basswood, and other strong-growing things,
to the ground each year, for the purpose of securing the stout shoots.
Figure 50 will give the hint.
[Illustration: Fig. 50. Young shoots of ailanthus (and sunflowers for
variety).]
But if one has no area which he can make into a lawn and upon which he
can plant such verdurous masses, what then may he do? Even then there
may be opportunity for a little neat and artistic planting. Even if one
lives in a rented house, he may bring in a bush or an herb from the
woods, and paint a picture with it. Plant it in the corner by the
steps, in front of the porch, at the corner of the house,—almost
anywhere except in the center of the lawn. Make the ground rich, secure
a strong root, and plant it with care; then wait. The little clump will
not only have a beauty and interest of its own, but it may add
immensely to the furniture of the yard.
[Illustration: Fig. 51. A backyard cabin.]
About these clumps one may plant bulbs of glowing tulips or dainty
snowdrops and lilies-of-the-valley; and these may be followed with
pansies and phlox and other simple folk. Very soon one finds himself
deeply interested in these random and detached pictures, and almost
before he is aware he finds that he has rounded off the corners of the
house, made snug little arbors of wild grapes and clematis, covered the
rear fence and the outhouse with actinidia and bitter-sweet, and has
thrown in dashes of color with hollyhocks, cannas, and lilies, and has
tied the foundations of the buildings to the greensward by low strands
of vines or deft bits of planting. He soon comes to feel that flowers
are most expressive of the best emotions when they are daintily dropped
in here and there against a background of foliage, or else made a
side-piece in the place. There is no limit to the adaptations; Figs. 51
to 58 suggest some of the backyard possibilities.
Presently he rebels at the bold, harsh, and impudent designs of some of
the gardeners, and grows into a resourceful love of plant forms and
verdure. He may still like the weeping and cut-leaved and party-colored
trees of the horticulturist, but he sees that their best effects are to
be had when they are planted sparingly, as borders or promontories of
the structural masses.
[Illustration: Fig. 52. A garden path with hedgerows, trellis, and
bench, in formal treatment.]
The best planting, as the best painting and the best music, is possible
only with the best and tenderest feeling and the closest living with
nature. One’s place grows to be a reflection of himself, changing as he
changes, and expressing his life and sympathies to the last.
_Review_
We have now discussed some of the principles and applications of
landscape architecture or landscape gardening, particularly in
reference to the planting. The object of landscape gardening is _to
make a picture_. All the grading, seeding, planting, are incidental and
supplemental to this one central idea. The greensward is the canvas,
the house or some other prominent point is the central figure, the
planting completes the composition and adds the color.
[Illustration: Fig. 53. An enclosure for lawn games.] [Illustration:
Fig. 54. Sunlight and shadow.]
The second conception is the principle that _the picture should have a
landscape effect_. That is, it should be nature-like. Carpet-beds are
masses of color, not pictures. They are the little garnishings and
reliefs that are to be used very cautiously, as little eccentricities
and conventionalisms in a building should never be more than very minor
features.
Every other concept in landscape gardening is subordinate to these two.
Some of the most important of these secondary yet underlying
considerations are as follows:—
The place is to be conceived of as _a unit_. If a building is not
pleasing, ask an architect to improve it. The real architect will study
the building as a whole, grasp its design and meaning, and suggest
improvements that will add to the forcefulness of the entire structure.
A dabbler would add a chimney here, a window there, and apply various
daubs of paint to the building. Each of these features might be good in
itself. The paints might be the best of ochre, ultramarine, or paris
green, but they might have no relation to the building as a whole and
would be only ludicrous. These two examples illustrate the difference
between landscape gardening and the scattering over the place of mere
ornamental features.
[Illustration: Fig. 55. An upland garden, with grass-grown steps,
sundial, and edge of foxgloves.] [Illustration: Fig. 56. A garden
corner.]
There should be _one central and emphatic point in the picture_. A
picture of a battle draws its interest from the action of a central
figure or group. The moment the incidental and lateral figures are made
as prominent as the central figures, the picture loses emphasis, life,
and meaning. The borders of a place are of less importance than its
center. Therefore:
_Keep the center of the place open_;
_Frame and mass the sides; Avoid scattered effects_.
In a landscape picture _flowers are incidents_. They add emphasis,
supply color, give variety and finish; they are the ornaments, but the
lawn and the mass-plantings make the framework. One flower in the
border, and made an incident of the picture, is more effective than
twenty flowers in the center of the lawn.
More depends on _the positions that plants occupy with reference to
each other and to the structural design of the place_, than on the
intrinsic merits of the plants themselves.
Landscape gardening, then, is the embellishment of grounds in such a
way that they will have a nature-like or landscape effect. The flowers
and accessories may heighten and accelerate the effect, but they should
not contradict it.
[Illustration: Fig. 57. An old-fashioned doorway.]
[Illustration: Fig. 58. An informally treated stream.]
CHAPTER III
EXECUTION OF SOME OF THE LANDSCAPE FEATURES
The general lay-out of a small home property having now been
considered, we may discuss the practical operations of executing the
plan. It is not intended in this chapter to discuss the general
question of how to handle the soil: that discussion comes in Chapter
IV; nor in detail how to handle plants: that occurs in Chapters V to X;
but the subjects of grading, laying out of walks and drives, executing
the border plantings, and the making of lawns, may be briefly
considered.
Of course the instructions given in a book, however complete, are very
inadequate and unsatisfactory as compared with the advice of a good
experienced person. It is not always possible to find such a person,
however; and it is no little satisfaction to the homemaker if he can
feel that he can handle the work himself, even at the expense of some
mistakes.
_The grading_.
The first consideration is to grade the land. Grading is very
expensive, especially if performed at a season when the soil is heavy
with water. Every effort should be made, therefore, to reduce the
grading to a minimum and still secure a pleasing contour. A good time
to grade, if one has the time, is in the fall before the heavy rains
come, and then allow the surface to settle until spring, when the
finish may be made. All filling will settle in time unless thoroughly
tamped as it proceeds.
The smaller the area the more pains must be taken with the grading; but
in any plat that is one hundred feet or more square, very considerable
undulations may be left in the surface with excellent effect. In lawns
of this size, or even half this size, it is rarely advisable to have
them perfectly flat and level. They should slope gradually away from
the house; and when the lawn is seventy-five feet or more in width, it
may be slightly crowning with good effect. A lawn should never be
hollow,—that is, lower in the center than at the borders,—and broad
lawns that are perfectly flat and level often appear to be hollow. A
slope of one foot in twenty or thirty is none too much for a pleasant
grade in lawns of some extent.
In small places, the grading may be done by the eye, unless there are
very particular conditions to meet. In large or difficult areas, it is
well to have the place contoured by instruments. This is particularly
desirable if the grading is to be done on contract. A basal or datum
line is established, above or below which all surfaces are to be shaped
at measured distances. Even in small yards, such a datum line is
desirable for the best kind of work.
_The terrace_.
[Illustration: Fig. 59. A terrace in the distance; in the foreground an
ideal “running out” of the bank.]
In places in which the natural slope is very perceptible, there is a
tendency to terrace the lawn for the purpose of making the various
parts or sections of it more or less level and plane. In nearly all
cases, however, a terrace in a main lawn is objectionable. It cuts the
lawn into two or more portions, and thereby makes it look smaller and
spoils the effect of the picture. A terrace always obtrudes a hard and
rigid line, and fastens the attention upon itself rather than upon the
landscape. Terraces are also expensive to make and to keep in order;
and a shabby terrace is always distracting.
When formal effects are desired, their success depends, however, very
largely on the rigidity of the lines and the care with which they are
maintained. If a terrace is necessary, it should be in the form of a
retaining wall next the street, or else it should lie next the
building, giving as broad and continuous a lawn as possible. It should
be remembered, however, that a terrace next a building should not be a
part of the landscape, but a part of the architecture; that is, it
should serve as a base to the building. It will at once be seen,
therefore, that terraces are most in place against those buildings that
have strong horizontal lines, and they are little suitable against
buildings with very broken lines and mixed or gothic features. In order
to join the terrace to the building, it is usually advisable to place
some architectural feature upon its crown, as a balustrade, and to
ascend it by means of architectural steps. The terrace elevation,
therefore, becomes a part of the base of the building, and the top of
it is an esplanade.
[Illustration: Fig. 60. Treatment of a sloping lawn.]
A simple and gradually sloping bank can nearly always be made to take
the place of a terrace. For example, let the operator make a terrace,
with sharp angles above and below, in the fall of the year; in the
spring, he will find (if he has not sodded it heavily) that nature has
taken the matter in hand and the upper angle of the terrace has been
washed away and deposited in the lower angle, and the result is the
beginning of a good series of curves. Figure 59 shows an ideal slope,
with its double curve, comprising a convex curve on the top of the
bank, and a concave curve at the lower part. This is a slope that would
ordinarily be terraced, but in its present condition it is a part of
the landscape picture. It may be mown as readily as any other part of
the lawn, and it takes care of itself.
[Illustration: Fig. 61. Treatment of a very steep bank.]
The diagrams in Fig. 60 indicate poor and good treatment of a lawn. The
terraces are not needed in this case; or if they are, they should never
be made as at 1. The same dip could be taken up in a single curved
bank, as at 3, but the better way, in general, is to give the treatment
shown in 2. Figure 61 shows how a very high terrace, 4, can be
supplaced by a sloping bank 5. Figure 62 shows a terrace that falls
away too suddenly from the house.
_The bounding lines_.
In grading to the borders of the place, it is not always necessary, nor
even desirable, that a continuous contour should be maintained,
especially if the border is higher or lower than the lawn. A somewhat
irregular line of grade will appear to be most natural, and lend itself
best to effective planting. This is specially true in the grade to
watercourses, which, as a rule, should be more or less devious or
winding; and the adjacent land should, therefore, present various
heights and contours. It is not always necessary, however, to make
distinct banks along water-courses, particularly if the place is small
and the natural lay of the land is more or less plane or flat. A very
slight depression, as shown in Fig. 63, may answer all the purposes of
a water grade in such places.
[Illustration: Fig. 62. A terrace or slope that falls too suddenly away
from a building. There should be a level place or esplanade next the
building, if possible.]
[Illustration: 63. Shaping the land down to a water-course.]
If it is desirable that the lawn be as large and spacious as possible,
then the boundary of it should be removed. Take away the fences,
curbing, and other right lines. In rural places, a sunken fence may
sometimes be placed athwart the lawn at its farther edge for the
purpose of keeping cattle off the place, and thereby bring in the
adjacent landscape. Figure 64 suggests how this may be done. The
depression near the foot of the lawn, which is really a ditch and
scarcely visible from the upper part of the place because of the slight
elevation on its inner rim, answers all the purposes of a fence.
[Illustration: Fig. 64. A sunken fence athwart a foreground.]
[Illustration: Fig. 65. Protecting a tree in filled land.]
Nearly all trees are injured if the dirt is filled about the base to
the depth of a foot or more. The natural base of the plant should be
exposed so far as possible, not only for protection of the tree, but
because the base of a tree trunk is one of its most distinctive
features. Oaks, maples, and in fact most trees will lose their bark
near the crown if the dirt is piled against them; and this is
especially true if the water tends to settle about the trunks. Figure
65 shows how this difficulty may be obviated. A well is stoned up,
allowing a space of a foot or two on all sides, and tile drains are
laid about the base of the well, as shown in the diagram at the right.
A grating to cover a well is also shown. It is often possible to make a
sloping bank just above the tree, and to allow the ground to fall away
from the roots on the lower side, so that there is no well or hole; but
this is practicable only when the land below, the tree is considerably
lower than that above it.
If much of the surface is to be removed, the good top earth should be
saved, and placed back on the area, in which to sow the grass seed and
to make the plantings. This top soil may be piled at one side out of
the way while the grading is proceeding.
_Walks and drives_.
So far as the picture in the landscape is concerned, walks and drives
are blemishes. Since they are necessary, however, they must form a part
of the landscape design. They should be as few as possible, not only
because they interfere with the artistic composition, but also because
they are expensive to make and to maintain.
Most places have too many, rather than too few, walks and drives. Small
city areas rarely need a driveway entrance, not even to the back door.
The back yard in Fig. 39 illustrates this point. The distance from the
house to the street on the back is about ninety feet, yet there is no
driveway in the place. The coal and provisions are carried in; and,
although the deliverymen may complain at first, they very soon accept
the inevitable. It is not worth the while to maintain a drive in such a
place for the convenience of truckmen and grocers. Neither is it often
necessary to have a drive in the front yard if the house is within
seventy-five or one hundred feet of the street. When a drive is
necessary, it should enter, if possible, at the side of the residence,
and not make a circle in the front lawn. This remark may not apply to
areas of a half acre or more.
[Illustration: Fig. 66. Forms of front walks.]
The drives and walks should be direct. They should go where they appear
to go, and should be practically the shortest distances between the
points to be reached. Figure 66 illustrates some of the problems
connected with walks to the front door. A common type of walk is _a_,
and it is a nuisance. The time that one loses in going around the
cameo-set in the center would be sufficient, if conserved, to lengthen
a man’s life by several months or a year. Such a device has no merit in
art or convenience. Walk _b_ is better, but still is not ideal,
inasmuch as it makes too much of a right-angled curve, and the
pedestrian desires to cut across the corner. Such a walk, also, usually
extends too far beyond the corner of the house to make it appear to be
direct. It has the merit, however, of leaving the center of the lawn
practically untouched. The curve in walk _d_ is ordinarily unnecessary
unless the ground is rolling. In small places, like this, it is better
to have a straight walk directly from the sidewalk to the house. In
fact, this is true in nearly all cases in which the lawn is not more
than forty to seventy-five feet deep. Plan _c_ is also inexcusable. A
straight walk would answer every purpose better. Any walk that passes
the house, and returns to it, _e_, is inexcusable unless it is
necessary to make a very steep ascent. If most of the traveling is in
one direction from the house, a walk like _f_ may be the most direct
and efficient. It is known as a direct curve, and is a compound of a
concave and a convex curve.
It is essential that any service walk or drive, however long, should be
continuous in direction and design from end to end. Figure 67
illustrates a long drive that contradicts this principle.
[Illustration: Fig. 67. A patched-up drive, showing meaningless
crooks.]
It is a series of meaningless curves. The reason for these curves is
the fact that the drive was extended from time to time as new houses
were added to the villa. The reader will easily perceive how all the
kinks might be taken out of this drive and one direct and bold curve be
substituted.
The question of drainage, curbing, and gutters.
Thorough drainage, natural or artificial, is essential to hard and
permanent walks and drives. This point is too often neglected. On the
draining and grading of residence streets a well-known landscape
gardener, O.C. Simonds, writes as follows in “Park and Cemetery”:
[Illustration: Fig. 68. Treatment of walk and drive in a suburban
region. There are no curbs.]
“The surface drainage is something that interests us whenever it rains
or when the snow melts. It has been customary to locate catch-basins
for receiving the surface water at street intersections. This
arrangement causes most of the surface water from both streets to run
past the crossings, making it necessary to depress the pavement, so
that one must step down and up in going from one side of a street to
the other, or else a passageway for the water must be made through the
crossing. It may be said that a step down to the pavement and up again
to the sidewalk at the street intersections is of no consequence, but
it is really more elegant and satisfactory to have the walk practically
continuous (Fig. 68). With the catch-basin at the corner, the stoppage
of the inlet, or a great fall of rain, sometimes covers the crossing
with water, so one must either wade or go out of his way. With
catch-basins placed in the center of the blocks, or, if the blocks are
long, at some distance from the crossing, the intersections can be kept
relatively high and dry. Roadways are generally made crowning in the
center so that water runs to the sides, but frequently the fall
lengthwise of the roadway is less than it should be. City engineers are
usually inclined to make the grade along the length of a street as
nearly level as possible. Authorities who have given the subject of
roads considerable study recommend a fall lengthwise of not less than
one foot in one hundred and twenty-five, nor more than six feet in one
hundred. Such grades are not always feasible, but a certain amount of
variation in level can usually be made in a residence street which will
make it much more pleasing in appearance, and have certain practical
advantages in keeping the street dry. The water is usually confined to
the edge of the pavement by curbing, which may rise anywhere from four
to fourteen inches above the surface. This causes all the water falling
on the roadway to seek the catch-basin and be wasted, excepting for its
use in flushing the sewer. If the curbing, which is really unnecessary
in most cases, were omitted, much of the surface water would soak into
the ground between the sidewalk and the pavement, doing much good to
trees, shrubs, and grass. The roots of the trees naturally extend as
far, or farther, than their branches, and for their good the ground
under the pavement and sidewalk should be supplied with a certain
amount of moisture.
VI. A tree that gives character to a place. VI. A tree that gives
character to a place.
“The arrangement made for the removal of surface water from the street
must also take care of the surplus water from adjacent lots, so there
is a practical advantage in having the level of the street lower than
that of the ground adjoining. The appearance of houses and home grounds
is also much better when they are higher than the street, and for this
reason it is usually desirable to keep the latter as low as possible
and give the underground pipes sufficient covering to protect them from
frost. Where the ground is high and the sewers very deep, the grades
should, of course, be determined with reference to surface conditions
only. It sometimes happens that this general arrangement of the grades
of home grounds, which is desirable on most accounts, causes water from
melting snow to flow over the sidewalk in the winter time, where it may
freeze and be dangerous to pedestrians. A slight depression of the lot
away from the sidewalk and then an ascent toward the house would
usually remedy this difficulty, and also make the house appear higher.
Sometimes, however, a pipe should be placed underneath the sidewalk to
allow water to reach the street from inside of the lot line. The aim in
surface drainage should always be to keep the traveled portions of the
street in the most perfect condition for use. The quick removal of
surplus water from sidewalks, crossings, and roadways will help insure
this result.”
[Illustration: Fig. 69. A common form of edge for walk or drive.]
[Illustration: Fig. 70. A better form.]
These remarks concerning the curbings and hard edges of city streets
may also be applied to walks and drives in small grounds. Figure 69,
for example, shows the common method of treating the edge of a walk, by
making a sharp and sheer elevation. This edge needs constant trimming,
else it becomes unshapely; and this trimming tends to widen the walk.
For general purposes, a border, like that shown in Fig. 70, is better.
The sod rolls over until it meets the walk, and the lawn-mower is able
to keep it in condition. If it becomes more or less rough and
irregular, it is pounded down.
[Illustration: Fig. 71. Sod cutter.]
If it is thought necessary to trim the edges of walks and drives, then
one of the various kinds of sod-cutters that are sold by dealers may be
used for the purpose, or an old hoe may have its shank straightened and
the corners of the blade rounded off, as shown in Fig. 71, and this
will answer all purposes of the common sod-cutter; or, a sharp,
straight-edged spade may sometimes be used. The loose overhanging grass
on these edges is ordinarily cut by large shears made for the purpose.
Walks and drives should be laid in such direction that they will tend
to drain themselves; but if it is necessary to have gutters, these
should be deep and sharp at the bottom, for the water then draws
together and tends to keep the gutter clean. A shallow and rounded
brick or cobble gutter does not clean itself; it is very likely to fill
with weeds, and vehicles often drive in it. The best gutters and curbs
are now made of cement. Figure 72 shows a catch basin at the left of a
walk or drive, and the tile laid underneath for the purpose of carrying
away the surface water.
The materials.
[Illustration: Fig. 72. Draining the gutter and the drive.]
The best materials for the main walks are cement and stone flagging. In
many soils, however, there is enough binding material in the land to
make a good walk without the addition of any other material. Gravel,
cinders, ashes, and the like, are nearly always inadvisable, for they
are liable to be loose in dry weather and sticky in wet weather. In the
laying of cement it is important that the walk be well drained by a
layer of a foot or two of broken stone or brickbats, unless the walk is
on loose and leachy land or in a frostless country.
In back yards it is often best not to have any well-defined walk. A
ramble across the sod may be as good. For a back walk, over which
delivery men are to travel, one of the very best means is to sink a
foot-wide plank into the earth on a level with the surface of the sod;
and it is not necessary that the walk be perfectly straight. These
walks do not interfere with the work of the lawn-mower, and they take
care of themselves. When the plank rots, at the expiration of five to
ten years, the plank is taken up and another one dropped in its place.
This ordinarily makes the best kind of a walk alongside a rear border.
(Plate XI.) In gardens, nothing is better for a walk than tanbark.
[Illustration: Fig. 73. Planting alongside a walk.]
The sides of walks and drives may often be planted with shrubbery. It
is not necessary that they always have prim and definite borders.
Figure 73 illustrates a bank of foliage which breaks up the hard line
of a walk, and serves also as a border for the growing of flowers and
interesting specimens. This walk is also characterized by the absence
of high and hard borders. Figure 68 illustrates this fact, and also
shows how the parking between the walk and the street may be
effectively planted.
_Making the borders_.
The borders and groups of planting are laid out on the paper plan.
There are several ways of transferring them to the ground. Sometimes
they are not made until after the lawn is established, when the
inexperienced operator may more readily lay them out. Usually, however,
the planting and lawn-making proceed more or less simultaneously. After
the shaping of the ground has been completed, the areas are marked off
by stakes, by a limp rope laid on the surface, or by a mark made with a
rake handle. The margin once determined, the lawn may be seeded and
rolled (Fig. 40), and the planting allowed to proceed as it may; or the
planting may all be done inside the borders, and the seeding then be
applied to the lawn. If the main dimensions of the borders and beds are
carefully measured and marked by stakes, it is an easy matter to
complete the outline by making a mark with a stick or rakestale.
[Illustration: Fig. 74. A bowered pathway.] [Illustration: Fig. 75.
Objects for pity.]
The planting may be done in spring or fall,—in fall preferably if the
stock is ready (and of hardy species) and the land in perfect condition
of drainage; usually, however, things are not ready early enough in the
fall for any extended planting, and the work is commonly done as soon
as the ground settles in spring (see Chapter V). Head the bushes back.
Dig up the entire area. Spade up the ground, set the bushes thick, hoe
them at intervals, and then let them go. If you do not like the bare
earth between them, sow in the seeds of hardy annual flowers, like
phlox, petunia, alyssum, and pinks. Never set the bushes in holes dug
in the old sod (Fig. 75). The person who plants his shrubs in holes in
the sward does not seriously mean to make any foliage mass, and it is
likely that he does not know what relation the border mass has to
artistic planting. The illustration, Fig. 76, shows the office that a
shrubbery may perform in relation to a building; this particular
building was erected in an open field.
[Illustration: 76. A border group, limiting the space next the
residence and separating it from the fields and the clothes-yards.]
I have said to plant the bushes thick. This is for quick effect. It is
an easy matter to thin the plantation if it becomes too thick. All
common bushes may usually be planted as close as two to three feet
apart each way, especially if one gets many of them from the fields, so
that he does not have to buy them. If there are not sufficient of the
permanent bushes for thick planting, the spaces may be tilled
temporarily by cheaper or commoner bushes: but do not forget to remove
the fillers as rapidly as the others need the room.
_Making the lawn_.
The first thing to be done in the making of a lawn is to establish the
proper grade. This should be worked out with the greatest care, from
the fact that when a lawn is once made, its level and contour should
never be changed.
Preparing the ground.
The next important step is to prepare the ground deeply and thoroughly.
The permanence of the sod will depend very largely on the fertility and
preparation of the soil in the beginning. The soil should be deep and
porous, so that the roots will strike far into it, and be enabled
thereby to withstand droughts and cold winters. The best means of
deepening the soil, as explained in Chapter IV, is by tile-draining;
but it can also be accomplished to some extent by the use of the
subsoil plow and by trenching. Since the lawn cannot be refitted,
however, the subsoil is likely to fall back into a hard-pan in a few
years if it has been subsoiled or trenched, whereas a good tile-drain
affords a permanent amelioration of the under soil. Soils that are
naturally loose and porous may not need this extra attention. In fact,
lands that are very loose and sandy may require to be packed or
cemented rather than loosened. One of the best means of doing this is
to fill them with humus, so that the water will not leach through them
rapidly. Nearly all lands that are designed for lawns are greatly
benefited by heavy dressings of manure thoroughly worked into them in
the beginning, although it is possible to get the ground too rich on
the surface at first; it is not necessary that all the added plant-food
be immediately available.
The lawn will profit by an annual application of good chemical
fertilizer. Ground bone is one of the best materials to apply, at the
rate of three hundred to four hundred pounds to the acre. It is usually
sown broadcast, early in spring. Dissolved South Carolina rock may be
used instead, but the application will need to be heavier if similar
results are expected. Yellow and poor grass may often be reinvigorated
by an application of two hundred to three hundred pounds to the acre of
nitrate of soda. Wood ashes are often good, particularly on soils that
tend to be acid. Muriate of potash is not so often used, although it
may produce excellent results in some cases. There is no invariable
rule. The best plan is for the lawn-maker to try the different
treatments on a little piece or corner of the lawn; in this way, he
should secure more valuable information than can be got otherwise.
The first operation after draining and grading is the plowing or
spading of the surface. If the area is large enough to admit a team,
the surface is worked down by means of harrows of various kinds.
Afterwards it is leveled by means of shovels and hoes, and finally by
garden rakes. The more finely and completely the soil is pulverized,
the quicker the lawn may be secured, and the more permanent are the
results.
The kind of grass.
The best grass for the body or foundation of lawns in the North is
June-grass or Kentucky blue-grass (_Poa pratensis_), not Canada
blue-grass (_Poa compressa_).
Whether white clover or other seed should be sown with the grass seed
is very largely a personal question. Some persons like it, and others
do not. If it is desired, it may be sown directly after the grass seed
is sown, at the rate of one to four quarts or more to the acre.
For special purposes, other grasses may be used for lawns. Various
kinds of lawn mixtures are on the market, for particular uses, and some
of them are very good.
A superintendent of parks in one of the Eastern cities gives the
following experience on kinds of grass: “For the meadows on the large
parks we generally use extra recleaned Kentucky blue-grass, red-top,
and white clover, in the proportion of thirty pounds of blue-grass,
thirty pounds of red-top, and ten pounds of white clover to the acre.
Sometimes we use for smaller lawns the blue-grass and red-top without
the white clover. We have used blue-grass, red-top, and Rhode Island
bent in the proportion of twenty pounds each, and ten pounds of white
clover to the acre, but the Rhode Island bent is so expensive that we
rarely buy it. For grass in shady places, as in a grove, we use
Kentucky blue-grass and rough-stalked meadow-grass (_Poa trivialis_) in
equal parts at the rate of seventy pounds to the acre. On the golf
links we use blue-grass without any mixture on some of the putting
greens; sometimes we use Rhode Island bent, and on sandy greens we use
red-top. We always buy each kind of seed separately and mix them, and
are particular to get the best extra recleaned of each kind. Frequently
we get the seed of three different dealers to secure the best.”
In most cases, the June-grass germinates and grows somewhat slowly, and
it is usually advisable to sow four or five quarts of timothy grass to
the acre with the June-grass seed. The timothy comes on quickly and
makes a green the first year, and the June-grass soon crowds it out. It
is not advisable to sow grain in the lawn as a nurse to the grass. If
the land is well prepared and the seed is sown in the cool part of the
year, the grass ought to grow much better without the other crops than
with them. Lands that are hard and lacking in nitrogen may be benefited
if crimson clover (four or five quarts) is sown with the grass seed.
This will make a green the first year, and will break up the subsoil by
its deep roots and supply nitrogen, and being an annual plant it does
not become troublesome, if mown frequently enough to prevent seeding.
In the southern states, where June-grass does not thrive, Bermuda-grass
is the leading species used for lawns; although there are two or three
others, as the goose-grass of Florida, that may be used in special
localities. Bermuda-grass is usually propagated by roots, but imported
seed (said to be from Australia) is now available. The Bermuda-grass
becomes reddish after frost; and English rye-grass may be sown on the
Bermuda sod in August or September far south for winter green; in
spring the Bermuda crowds it out.
When and how to sow the seed.
The lawn should be seeded when the land is moist and the weather
comparatively cool. It is ordinarily most advisable to grade the lawn
in late summer or early fall, because the land is then comparatively
dry and can be moved cheaply. The surface can also be got in condition,
perhaps, for sowing late in September or early in October in the North;
or, if the surface has required much filling, it is well to leave it in
a somewhat unfinished state until spring, in order that the soft places
may settle and then be refilled before the seeding is done. If the seed
can be sown early in the fall, before the rains come, the grass should
be large enough, except in northernmost localities, to withstand the
winter; but it is generally most desirable to sow in very early spring.
If the land has been thoroughly prepared in the fall, the seed may be
sown on one of the late light snows in spring and as the snow melts the
seed is carried into the land, and germinates very quickly. If the seed
is sown when the land is loose and workable, it should be raked in; and
if the weather promises to be dry or the sowing is late, the surface
should be rolled.
The seeding is usually done broadcast by hand on all small areas, the
sower going both ways (at right angles) across the area to lessen the
likelihood of missing any part. Steep banks are sometimes sown with
seed that is mixed in mold or earth to which water is added until the
material will just run through the spout of a watering-can; the
material is then poured on the surface, which is first made loose.
Inasmuch as we desire to secure many very fine stalks of grass rather
than a few large ones, it is essential that the seed be sown very
thick. Three to five bushels to the acre is the ordinary application of
grass seed (page 79).
Securing a firm sod.
The lawn will ordinarily produce a heavy crop of weeds the first year,
especially if much stable manure has been used. The weeds need not be
pulled, unless such vicious intruders as docks or other perennial
plants gain a foothold; but the area should be mown frequently with a
lawn-mower. The annual weeds die at the approach of cold, and they are
kept down by the use of the lawn-mower, while the grass is not injured.
It rarely happens that every part of the lawn will have an equal catch
of grass. The bare or sparsely seeded places should be sown again every
fall and spring until the lawn is finally complete. In fact, it
requires constant attention to keep a lawn in good sod, and it must be
continuously in the process of making. It is not every lawn area, or
every part of the area, that is adapted to grass; and it may require
long study to find out why it is not. Bare or poor places should be
hetcheled up strongly with an iron-toothed rake, perhaps fertilized
again, and then reseeded. It is unusual that a lawn does not need
repairing every year. Lawns of several acres which become thin and
mossy may be treated in essentially the same way by dragging them with
a spike-tooth harrow in early spring as soon as the land is dry enough
to hold a team. Chemical fertilizers and grass seed are now sown
liberally, and the area is perhaps dragged again, although this is not
always essential; and then the roller is applied to bring the surface
into a smooth condition. To plow up these poor lawns is to renew all
the battle with weeds, and really to make no progress; for, so long as
the contour is correct, the lawn may be repaired by these surface
applications.
The stronger the sward, the less the trouble with weeds; yet it is
practically impossible to keep dandelions and some other weeds out of
lawns except by cutting them out with a knife thrust underground (there
are good spuds manufactured for this purpose, Figs. 108 to 111). If the
sod is very thin after the weeds are removed, sow more grass seed.
The mowing.
The mowing of the lawn should begin as soon as the grass is tall enough
in the spring and continue at the necessary intervals throughout the
summer. The most frequent mowings are needed early in the season, when
the grass is growing rapidly. If it is mown frequently—say once or
twice a week—in the periods of most vigorous growth, it will not be
necessary to rake off the mowings. In fact, it is preferable to leave
the grass on the lawn, to be driven into the surface by the rains and
to afford a mulch. It is only when the lawn has been neglected and the
grass has got so high that it becomes unsightly on the lawn, or when
the growth is unusually luxurious, that it is necessary to take it off.
In dry weather care should be taken not to mow the lawn any more than
absolutely necessary. The grass should be rather long when it goes into
the winter. In the last two months of open weather the grass makes
small growth, and it tends to lop down and to cover the surface
densely, which it should be allowed to do.
Fall treatment.
As a rule, it is not necessary to rake all the leaves off lawns in the
fall. They afford an excellent mulch, and in the autumn months the
leaves on the lawn are among the most attractive features of the
landscape. The leaves generally blow off after a time, and if the place
has been constructed with an open center and heavily planted sides, the
leaves will be caught in these masses of trees and shrubs and there
afford an excellent mulch. The ideal landscape planting, therefore,
takes care of itself to a very large extent. It is bad economy to burn
the leaves, especially if one has herbaceous borders, roses, and other
plants that need a mulch. When the leaves are taken off the borders in
the spring, they should be piled with the manure or other refuse and
there allowed to pass into compost (pages 110, 111).
If the land has been well prepared in the beginning, and its life is
not sapped by large trees, it is ordinarily unnecessary to cover the
lawn with manure in the fall. The common practice of covering grass
with raw manure should be discouraged because the material is unsightly
and unsavory, and the same results can be got with the use of
commercial fertilizers combined with dressings of very fine and
well-rotted compost or manure, and by not raking the lawn too clean of
the mowings of the grass.
Spring treatment.
Every spring the lawn should be firmed by means of a roller, or, if the
area is small, by means of a pounder, or the back of a spade in the
hands of a vigorous man. The lawn-mower itself tends to pack the
surface. If there are little irregularities in the surface, caused by
depressions of an inch or so, and the highest places are not above the
contour-line of the lawn, the surface may be brought to level by
spreading fine, mellow soil over it, thereby filling up the
depressions. The grass will quickly grow through this soil. Little
hummocks may be cut off, some of the earth removed, and the sod
replaced.
Watering lawns.
The common watering of lawns by means of lawn sprinklers usually does
more harm than good. This results from the fact that the watering is
generally done in clear weather, and the water is thrown through the
air in very fine spray, so that a considerable part of it is lost in
vapor. The ground is also hot, and the water does not pass deep into
the soil. If the lawn is watered at all, it should be soaked; turn on
the hose at nightfall and let it run until the land is wet as deep as
it is dry, then move the hose to another place. A thorough soaking like
this, a few times in a dry summer, will do more good than sprinkling
every day. If the land is deeply prepared in the first place, so that
the roots strike far into the soil, there is rarely need of watering
unless the place is arid, the season unusually dry, or the moisture
sucked out by trees. The surface sprinkling engenders a tendency of
roots to start near the surface, and therefore the more the lawn is
lightly watered, the greater is the necessity for watering it.
Sodding the lawn.
[Illustration: Fig. 77. Cutting sod for a lawn.]
Persons who desire to secure a lawn very quickly may sod the area
rather than seed it, although the most permanent results are usually
secured by seeding. Sodding, however, is expensive, and is to be used
only about the borders of the place, near buildings, or in areas in
which the owner can afford to expend considerable money. The best sod
is that which is secured from an old pasture, and for two or three
reasons. In the first place, it is the right kind of grass, the
June-grass (in the North) being the species that oftenest runs into
pastures and crowds out other plants. Again, it has been so closely
eaten down, especially if it has been pastured by sheep, that it has
made a very dense and well-filled sod, which can be rolled up in thin
layers. In the third place, the soil in old pastures is likely to be
rich from the droppings of animals.
[Illustration: Fig. 78. Economical sodding, the spaces being seeded.]
In taking sod, it is important that it be cut very thin. An inch and a
half thick is usually ample. It is ordinarily rolled up in strips a
foot wide and of any length that will allow the rolls to be handled by
one or two men. A foot-wide board is laid upon the turf, and the sod
cut along either edge of it. One person then stands upon the strip of
sod and rolls it towards himself, while another cuts it loose with a
spade, as shown in Fig. 77. When the sod is laid, it is unrolled on the
land and then firmly beaten down. Land that is to be sodded should be
soft on top, so that the sod can be well pounded into it. If the sod is
not well pounded down, it will settle unevenly and present a bad
surface, and will also dry out and perhaps not live through a dry
spell. It is almost impossible to pound down sod too firm. If the land
is freshly plowed, it is important that the borders that are sodded be
an inch or two lower than the adjacent land, because the land will
settle in the course of a few weeks. In a dry time, the sod may be
covered from a half inch to an inch with fine, mellow soil as a mulch.
The grass should grow through this soil without difficulty. Upon
terraces and steep banks, the sod may be held in place by driving
wooden pegs through it.
A combination of sodding and seeding.
An “economical sodding” is described in “American Garden” (Fig. 78):
“To obtain sufficient sod of suitable quality for covering
terrace-slopes or small blocks that for any reason cannot well be
seeded is often a difficult matter. In the accompanying illustration we
show how a surface of sod may be used to good advantage over a larger
area than its real measurement represents. This is done by laying the
sods, cut in strips from six to ten inches wide, in lines and
cross-lines, and after filling the spaces with good soil, sowing these
spaces with grass-seed. Should the catch of seed for any reason be
poor, the sod of the strips will tend to spread over the spaces between
them, and failure to obtain a good sward within a reasonable time is
almost out of the question. Also, if one needs sod and has no place
from which to cut it except the lawn, by taking up blocks of sod,
leaving strips and cross-strips, and treating the surface as described,
the bare places are soon covered with green.”
Sowing with sod.
Lawns may be sown with pieces of sods rather than with seeds. Sods may
be cut up into bits an inch or two square, and these may be scattered
broadcast over the area and rolled into the land. While it is
preferable that the pieces should lie right side up, this is not
necessary if they are cut thin, and sown when the weather is cool and
moist. Sowing pieces of sod is good practice when it is difficult to
secure a catch from seed.
If one were to maintain a permanent sod garden, at one side, for the
selecting and growing of the very best sod (as he would grow a stock
seed of corn or beans), this method should be the most rational of all
procedures, at least until the time that we produce strains of lawn
grass that come true from seeds.
Other ground covers.
Under trees, and in other shady places, it may be necessary to cover
the ground with something else than grass. Good plants for such uses
are periwinkle (_Vinca minor_, an evergreen trailer, often called
“running myrtle”), moneywort (_Lysimachia nummularia_),
lily-of-the-valley, and various kinds of sedge or carex. In some dark
or shady places, and under some kinds of trees, it is practically
impossible to secure a good lawn, and one may be obliged to resort to
decumbent bushes or other forms of planting.
CHAPTER IV
THE HANDLING OF THE LAND
Almost any land contains enough food for the growing of good crops, but
the food elements may be chemically unavailable, or there may be
insufficient water to dissolve them. It is too long a story to explain
at this place,—the philosophy of tillage and of enriching the land,—and
the reader who desires to make excursions into this delightful subject
should consult King on “The Soil,” Roberts on “The Fertility of the
Land,” and recent writings of many kinds. The reader must accept my
word for it that tilling the land renders it productive.
I must call my reader’s attention to the fact that this book is on the
making of gardens,—on the planning and the doing of the work from the
year’s end to end,—not on the appreciation of a completed garden. I
want the reader to know that a garden is not worth having unless he
makes it with his own hands or helps to make it. He must work himself
into it. He must know the pleasure of preparing the land, of contending
with bugs and all other difficulties, for it is only thereby that he
comes into appreciation of the real value of a garden.
I am saying this to prepare the reader for the work that I lay out in
this chapter. I want him to know the real joy that there is in the
simple processes of breaking the earth and fitting it for the seed. The
more pains he takes with these processes, naturally the keener will be
his enjoyment of them. No one can have any other satisfaction than that
of mere manual exercise if he does not know the reasons for what he
does with his soil. I am sure that my keenest delight in a garden comes
in the one month of the opening season and the other month of the
closing season. These are the months when I work hardest and when I am
nearest the soil. To feel the thrust of the spade, to smell the sweet
earth, to prepare for the young plants and then to prepare for the
closing year, to handle the tools with discrimination, to guard against
frost, to be close with the rain and wind, to see the young things
start into life and then to see them go down into winter,—these are
some of the best of the joys of gardening. In this spirit we should
take up the work of handling the land.
_The draining of the land_.
[Illustration: Fig 79. Ditching tools.] The first step in the
preparation of land, after it has been thoroughly cleared and subdued
of forest or previous vegetation, is to attend to the drainage. All
land that is springy, low, and “sour,” or that holds the water in
puddles for a day or two following heavy rains, should be thoroughly
underdrained. Draining also improves the physical condition of the soil
even when the land does not need the removal of superfluous water. In
hard lands, it lowers the water-table, or tends to loosen and aerate
the soil to a greater depth, and thereby enables it to hold more water
without injury to plants. Drainage is particularly useful in dry but
hard garden lands, because these lands are often in sod or permanently
planted, and the soil cannot be broken up by deep tillage. Tile
drainage is permanent subsoiling.
Hard-baked cylindrical tiles make the best and most permanent drains.
The ditches usually should not be less than two and one-half feet deep,
and three or three and one-half feet is often better. In most garden
areas, drains may be laid with profit as often as every thirty feet.
Give all drains a good and continuous fall. For single drains and for
laterals not over four hundred or five hundred feet long, a two and
one-half inch tile is sufficient, unless much water must be carried
from swales or springs. In stony countries, flat stones may be used in
place of tiles, and persons who are skillful in laying them make drains
as good and permanent as those constructed of tiles. The tiles or
stones are covered with sods, straw, or paper, and the earth is then
filled in. This temporary cover keeps the loose dirt out of the tiles,
and by the time it is rotted the earth has settled into place.
In small places, ditching must ordinarily be done wholly with hand
tools. A common spade and pick are the implements usually employed,
although a spade with a long handle and narrow blade, as shown in Fig.
79, is very useful for excavating the bottom of the ditch.
[Illustration: Fig. 80. How to use a spade.]
In most cases, much time and muscle are wasted in the use of the pick.
If the digging is properly done, a spade can be used to cut the soil,
even in fairly hard clay land, with no great difficulty. The essential
point in the easy use of the spade is to manage so that one edge of the
spade always cuts a free or exposed surface. The illustration (Fig. 80)
will explain the method. When the operator endeavors to cut the soil in
the method shown at A, he is obliged to break both edges at every
thrust of the tool; but when he cuts the slice diagonally, first
throwing his spade to the right and then to the left, as shown at B, he
cuts only one side and is able to make progress without the expenditure
of useless effort. These remarks will apply to any spading of the land.
In large areas, horses may be used to facilitate the work of ditching.
There are ditching plows and machines, which, however, need not be
discussed here; but three or four furrows may be thrown out in either
direction with a strong plow, and a subsoil plow be run behind to break
up the hard-pan, and this may reduce the labor of digging as much as
one-half. When the excavating is completed, the bottom of the ditch is
evened up by means of a line or level, and the bed for the tiles is
prepared by the use of a goose-neck scoop, shown in Fig. 79. It is very
important that the outlets of drains be kept free of weeds and litter.
If the outlet is built up with mason work, to hold the end of the tile
intact, very much will be added to the permanency of the drain.
VII. Bedding with palms. If a bricked-up pit is made about the porch,
pot palms may be plunged in it in spring and pot conifers in winter;
and fall bulbs in tin cans (so that the receptacles will not split with
frost) may be plunged among the evergreens. VII. Bedding with palms. If
a bricked-up pit is made about the porch, pot palms may be plunged in
it in spring and pot conifers in winter; and fall bulbs in tin cans (so
that the receptacles will not split with frost) may be plunged among
the evergreens.
_Trenching and subsoiling_.
Although underdraining is the most important means of increasing the
depth of the soil, it is not always practicable to lay drains through
garden lands. In such cases, recourse is had to very deep preparation
of the land, either every year or every two or three years.
[Illustration: 81. Trenching with a spade.]
In small garden areas, this deep preparation will ordinarily be done by
trenching with a spade. This operation of trenching consists in
breaking up the earth two spades deep. Figure 81 explains the
operation. The section at the left shows a single spading, the earth
being thrown over to the right, leaving the subsoil exposed the whole
width of the bed. The section at the right shows a similar operation,
so far as the surface spading is concerned, but the subsoil has also
been cut as fast as it has been exposed. This under soil is not thrown
out on the surface, and usually it is not inverted; but a spadeful is
lifted and then allowed to drop so that it is thoroughly broken and
pulverized in the manipulation.
In all lands that have a hard and high subsoil, it is usually essential
to practice trenching if the best results are to be secured; this is
especially true when deep-rooted plants, as beets, parsnips, and other
root-crops, are to be grown; it prepares the soil to hold moisture; and
it allows the water of heavy rainfall to pass to greater depths rather
than to be held as puddles and in mud on the surface.
[Illustration: Fig. 82. Home-made subsoil plow.] [Illustration: Fig.
83. Forms of subsoil plows.] In places that can be entered with a team,
deep and heavy plowing to the depth of seven to ten inches may be
desirable on hard lands, especially if such lands cannot be plowed very
often; and the depth of the pulverization is often extended by means of
the subsoil plow. This subsoil plow does not turn a furrow, but a
second team draws the implement behind the ordinary plow, and the
bottom of the furrow is loosened and broken. Figure 82 shows a
home-made subsoil plow, and Fig. 83 two types of commercial tools. It
must be remembered that it is the hardest lands that need subsoiling
and that, therefore, the subsoil plow should be exceedingly strong.
_Preparation of the surface_.
Every pains should be taken to prevent the surface of the land from
becoming crusty or baked, for the hard surface establishes a capillary
connection with the moist soil beneath, and is a means of passing off
the water into the atmosphere. Loose and mellow soil also has more free
plant-food, and provides the most congenial conditions for the growth
of plants. The tools that one may use in preparing the surface soil are
now so many and so well adapted to the work that the gardener should
find special satisfaction in handling them.
If the soil is a stiff clay, it is often advisable to plow it or dig it
in the fall, allowing it to lie rough and loose all winter, so that the
weathering may pulverize and slake it. If the clay is very tenacious,
it may be necessary to throw leafmold or litter over the surface before
the spading is done, to prevent the soil from running together or
cementing before spring. With mellow and loamy lands, however, it is
ordinarily best to leave the preparation of the surface until spring.
[Illustration: Fig. 84. Improvising a spading-fork.]
In the preparation of the surface, the ordinary hand tools, or spades
and shovels, may be used. If, however, the soil is mellow, a fork is a
better tool than a spade, from the fact that it does not slice the
soil, but tends to break it up into smaller and more irregular masses.
The ordinary spading-fork, with strong flat tines, is a most
serviceable tool; a spading-fork for soft ground may be made from an
old manure fork by cutting down the tines, as shown in Fig. 84.
It is important that the soil should not be sticky when it is prepared,
as it is likely to become hard and baked and the physical condition be
greatly injured. However, land that is too wet for the reception of
seeds may still be thrown up loose with a spade or fork and allowed to
dry, and after two or three days the surface preparation may be
completed with the hoe and the rake. In ordinary soils the hoe is the
tool to follow the spading-fork or the spade, but for the final
preparation of the surface a steel garden-rake is the ideal implement.
[Illustration: Fig. 85. Excellent types of surface plows.]
In areas, large enough to admit horse tools, the land can be fitted
more economically by means of the various types of plows, harrows, and
cultivators that are to be had of any dealer in agricultural
implements. Figure 85 shows various types of model surface plows. The
one shown at the upper left-hand is considered by Roberts, in his
“Fertility of the Land,” to be the ideal general-purpose plow, as
respects shape and method of construction.
The type of machine to be used must be determined wholly by the
character of the land and the purposes for which it is to be fitted.
Lands that are hard and cloddy may be reduced by the use of the disk or
Acme harrows, shown in Fig. 86; but those that are friable and mellow
may not need such heavy and vigorous tools. On these mellower lands,
the spring-tooth harrow, types of which are shown in Fig. 87, may
follow the plow. On very hard lands, these spring-tooth harrows may
follow the disk and Acme types. The final preparation of the land is
accomplished by light implements of the pattern shown in Fig. 88. These
spike-tooth smoothing-harrows do for the field what the hand-rake does
for the garden-bed.
[Illustration: Fig. 86. Disk and Acme harrows, for the first working of
hard or cloddy land.]
[Illustration: Fig. 87. Spring-tooth harrows.]
If it is desired to put a very fine finish on the surface of the ground
by means of horse tools, implements like the Breed or Wiard weeder may
be used. These are constructed on the principle of a spring-tooth horse
hay-rake, and are most excellent, not only for fitting loose land for
ordinary seeding, but also for subsequent tillage.
[Illustration: Fig. 88. Spike-tooth harrow.]
[Illustration: Fig. 89. Spike-tooth and spring-tooth cultivators.]
In areas that cannot be entered with a team, various one-horse
implements may do the work that is accomplished by heavier tools in the
field. The spring-tooth cultivator, shown at the right in Fig. 89, may
do the kind of work that the spring-tooth harrows are expected to do on
larger areas; and various adjustable spike-tooth cultivators, two of
which are shown in Fig. 89, are useful for putting a finish on the
land. These tools are also available for the tilling of the surface
when crops are growing. The spring-tooth cultivator is a most useful
tool for cultivating raspberries and blackberries, and other
strong-rooted crops.
[Illustration: Fig. 90. Good type of wheel-hoe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 91. A single-blade wheel-hoe.]
[Illustration: Fig. 92. Double wheel-hoe, useful in straddling the
row.]
For still smaller areas, in which horses cannot be used and which are
still too large for tilling wholly by means of hoes and rakes, various
types of wheel-hoes may be used. These implements are now made in great
variety of patterns, to suit any taste and almost any kind of tillage.
For the best results, it is essential that the wheel should be large
and with a broad tire, that it may override obstacles. Figure 90 shows
an excellent type of wheel-hoe with five blades, and Fig. 91 shows one
with a single blade and that may be used in very narrow rows.
Two-wheeled hoes (Fig. 92) are often used, particularly when it is
necessary to have the implement very steady, and the wheels may
straddle the rows of low plants. Many of these wheel-hoes are provided
with various shapes of blades, so that the implement may be adjusted to
many kinds of work. Nearly all the weeding of beds of onions and like
plants can be done by means of these wheel-hoes, if the ground is well
prepared in the beginning; but it must be remembered that they are of
comparatively small use on very hard and cloddy and stony lands.
_The saving of moisture_.
The garden must have a liberal supply of moisture. The first effort
toward securing this supply should be the saving of the rainfall water.
Proper preparation and tillage put the land in such condition that it
holds the water of rainfall. Land that is very hard and compact may
shed the rainfall, particularly if it is sloping and if the surface is
bare of vegetation. If the hard-pan is near the surface, the land
cannot hold much water, and any ordinary rainfall may fill it so full
that it overflows, or puddles stand on the surface. On land in good
tilth, the water of rainfall sinks away, and is not visible as free
water.
As soon as the moisture begins to pass from the superincumbent
atmosphere, evaporation begins from the surface of the land. Any body
interposed between the land and the air checks this evaporation; this
is why there is moisture underneath a board. It is impracticable,
however, to floor over the garden with boards, but any covering will
have similar effect, but in different degree. A covering of sawdust or
leaves or dry ashes will prevent the loss of moisture. So will a
covering of dry earth. Now, inasmuch as the land is already covered
with earth, it only remains to loosen up a layer or stratum on top in
order to secure the mulch.
All this is only a roundabout way of saying that frequent shallow
surface tillage conserves moisture. The comparatively dry and loose
mulch breaks up the capillary connection between the surface soil and
the under soil, and while the mulch itself may be useless as a foraging
ground for roots, it more than pays its keep by its preventing of the
loss of moisture; and its own soluble plant-foods are washed down into
the lower soil by the rains.
As often as the surface becomes compact, the mulch should be renewed or
repaired by the use of the rake or cultivator or harrow. Persons are
deceived by supposing that so long as the surface remains moist, the
land is in the best possible condition; a moist surface may mean that
water is rapidly passing off into the atmosphere. A dry surface may
mean that less evaporation is taking place, and there may be moister
earth beneath it; and moisture is needed below the surface rather than
on top. A finely raked bed is dry on top; but the footprints of the cat
remain moist, for the animal packed the soil wherever it stepped and a
capillary connection was established with the water reservoir beneath.
Gardeners advise firming the earth over newly planted seeds to hasten
germination. This is essential in dry times; but what we gain in
hastening germination we lose in the more rapid evaporation of
moisture. The lesson is that we should loosen the soil as soon as the
seeds have germinated, to reduce evaporation to the minimum. Large
seeds, as beans and peas, may be planted deep and have the earth firmed
about them, and then the rake may be applied to the surface to stop the
rise of moisture before it reaches the air.
Two illustrations, adapted from Roberts’s “Fertility,” show good and
poor preparation of the land. Figure 93 is a section of land twelve
inches deep. The under soil has been finely broken and pulverized and
then compacted. It is mellow but firm, and is an excellent water
reservoir. Three inches of the surface is a mulch of loose and dry
earth. Figure 94 shows an earth-mulch, but it is too shallow; and the
under soil is so open and cloddy that the water runs through it.
[Illustration: Fig. 93. To illustrate good preparation of ground.]
[Illustration: 94. To illustrate poor preparation of ground.]
When the land is once properly prepared, the soil-mulch is maintained
by surface-working tools. In field practice, these tools are harrows
and horse cultivators of various kinds; in home garden practice they
are wheel-hoes, rakes, and many patterns of hand hoes and scarifiers,
with finger-weeders and other small implements for work directly among
the plants.
A garden soil is not in good condition when it is hard and crusted on
top. The crust may be the cause of wasting water, it keeps out the air,
and in general it is an uncongenial physical condition; but its
evaporation of water is probably its chief defect. Instead of pouring
water on the land, therefore, we first attempt to keep the moisture in
the land. If, however, the soil becomes so dry in spite of you that the
plants do not thrive, then water the bed. Do not _sprinkle_ it, but
_water_ it. Wet it clear through at evening. Then in the morning, when
the earth begins to dry, loosen the surface again to keep the water
from getting away. Sprinkling the plants every day or two is one of the
surest ways of spoiling them. We may water the ground with a
garden-rake.
_Hand tools for weeding and subsequent tillage and other hand work._
Any of the cultivators and wheel-hoes are as useful for the subsequent
tilling of the crop as for the initial preparation of the land, but
there are other tools also that greatly facilitate the keeping of the
plantation in order. Yet wholly aside from the value of a tool as an
implement of tillage and as a weapon for the pursuit of weeds, is its
merit merely as a shapely and interesting instrument. A man will take
infinite pains to choose a gun or a fishing-rod to his liking, and a
woman gives her best attention to the selecting of an umbrella; but a
hoe is only a hoe and a rake only a rake. If one puts his personal
choice into the securing of plants for a garden, so should he
discriminate in the choice of hand tools, to secure those that are
light, trim, well made, and precisely adapted to the work to be
accomplished. A case of neat garden tools ought to be a great joy to a
joyful gardener. So I am willing to enlarge on the subject of hoes and
their kind.
The hoe.
[Illustration: 95. Useful forms of hoe-blades.]
The common rectangular-bladed hoe is so thoroughly established in the
popular mind that it is very difficult to introduce new patterns, even
though they may be intrinsically superior. As a general-purpose tool,
it is no doubt true that a common hoe is better than any of its
modifications, but there are various patterns of hoe-blades that are
greatly superior for special uses, and which ought to appeal to any
quiet soul who loves a garden.
The great width of the common blade does not admit of its being used in
very narrow rows or very close to delicate plants, and it does not
allow of the deep stirring of the soil in narrow spaces. It is also
difficult to enter hard ground with such a broad face. Various pointed
blades have been introduced from time to time, and most of them have
merit. Some persons prefer two points to the hoe, as shown in Marvin’s
blades, in Fig. 95. These interesting shapes represent the suggestions
of gardeners who will not be bound by what the market affords, but who
have blades cut and fitted for their own satisfaction.
[Illustration: Fig. 96. A stack of gardening weapons, comprising some
of Tarryer’s weeding spuds and thimbles.]
Persons who followed the entertaining writings of one who called
himself Mr. A.B. Tarryer, in “American Garden,” a few years back, will
recall the great variety of implements that he advised for the purpose
of extirpating his hereditary foes, the weeds. A variety of these
blades and tools is shown in Figs. 96 and 97. I shall let Mr. Tarryer
tell his story at some length in order to lead my reader painlessly
into a new field of gardening pleasures.
Mr. Tarryer contends that the wheel-hoe is much too clumsy an affair to
allow of the pursuit of an individual weed. While the operator is busy
adjusting his machine and manipulating it about the corners of the
garden, the quack-grass has escaped over the fence or has gone to seed
at the other end of the plantation. He devised an expeditious tool for
each little work to be performed on the garden,—for hard ground and
soft, for old weeds and young (one of his implements was denominated
“infant-damnation”).
[Illustration: Fig. 97. Some of the details of the Tarryer tools.]
“Scores of times during the season,” Mr. Tarryer writes, “the ten or
fifteen minutes one has to enjoy in the flower, fruit, and vegetable
garden—and that would suffice for the needful weeding with the hoes we
are celebrating—would be lost in harnessing horses or adjusting and
oiling squeaky wheel-hoes, even if everybody had them. The ‘American
Garden’ is not big enough, nor my patience long enough, to give more
than an inkling of the unspeakable merits of these weapons of society
and civilization. When Mrs. Tarryer was showing twelve or fifteen acres
of garden with never a weed to be seen, she valued her dozen or more of
these light implements at five or ten dollars daily; whether they were
in actual use or adorning the front hall, like a hunter’s or angler’s
furniture, made no difference. But where are these millennial tools
made and sold? Nowhere. They are as unknown as the Bible was in the
dark ages, and we must give a few hints towards manufacturing them.
“First, about the handles. The ordinary dealer or workman may say these
knobs can be formed on any handles by winding them with leather; but
just fancy a young maiden setting up her hoe meditatively and resting
her hands and chin upon an old leather knob to reflect upon something
that has been said to her in the garden, and we shall perceive that a
knob by some other name would smell far sweeter. Moreover, trees grow
large enough at the butt to furnish all the knobs we want—even for
broom-sticks—though sawyers, turners, dealers, and the public seem not
to be aware of it; yet it must be confessed we are so far gone in
depravity that there will be trouble in getting those handles....
“In a broadcast prayer of this public nature, absolute specifications
would not be polite. Black walnut and butternut are fragrant as well as
beautiful timber. Cherry is stiff, heavy, durable, and, like maple,
takes a slippery polish. For fine, light handles, that the palm will
stick to, butt cuts of poplar or cottonwood cannot be excelled, yet
straight-grained ash will bear more careless usage.
“The handles of Mrs. Tarryer’s hoes are never perfectly straight. All
the bayonet class bend downward in use half an inch or more; all the
thrust-hoe handles bend up in a regular curve (like a fiddle-bow turned
over) two or three inches. Unless they are hung right, these hoes are
very awkward things. When perfectly fit for one, they may not fit
another; that is, a tall, keen-sighted person cannot use the hoe that
is just fit for a very short one.... Curves in the handles throw
centers of gravity where they belong. Good timber generally warps in a
handle about right, only implement makers and babes in weeding may not
know when it is made fast right side up in the hoe.
“There are plenty of thrust-hoes in market, such as they are. Some have
malleable iron sockets and bows—heavier to the buyer and cheaper to the
dealer—instead of wrought-iron and steel, such as is required for true
worth.”
Scarifiers.
[Illustration: 98. A scarifier.]
[Illustration: 99. Home-made scarifier.]
[Illustration: 100. Home-made scarifier or scraper.]
[Illustration: 101. The common scarifier.]
For many purposes, tools that scrape or scarify the surface are
preferable to hoes that dig up the ground. Weeds may be kept down by
cutting them off, as in walks and often in flower-beds, rather than by
rooting them out. Figure 98 shows such a tool, and a home-made
implement answering the same purpose is illustrated in Fig. 99. This
latter tool is easily made from strong band-iron. Another type is
suggested in Fig. 100, representing a slicing-hoe made by fastening a
sheet of good metal to the tines of a broken fork. The kind chiefly in
the market is shown in Fig. 101.
Hand-weeders.
[Illustration: 102. Good hand-weeders.]
[Illustration: 103. A hand-weeder.]
[Illustration: 104. A finger-weeder.]
[Illustration: 105. A small hand-weeder.]
For small beds of flowers or vegetables, hand-weeders of various
patterns are essential to easy and efficient work. One of the best
patterns, with long and short handles, is shown in Fig. 102. Another
style, that may be made at home of hoop-iron, is drawn in Fig. 103. A
finger-weeder is illustrated in Fig. 104. In Fig. 105 a common form is
shown. Many patterns of hand-weeders are in the market, and other forms
will suggest themselves to the operator.
Trowels and their kind.
Small hand-tools for digging, as trowels, dibbers, and spuds, may be
had of dealers. In buying a trowel it is economy to pay an extra price
and secure a steel blade with a strong shank that runs through the
entire length of the handle. One of these tools will last several years
and may be used in hard ground, but the cheap trowels are generally
hardly worth the buying. A solid wrought-iron trowel all in one piece
is also manufactured, and is the most durable pattern. A steel trowel
may be secured to a long handle; or the blade of a broken trowel may be
utilized in the same way (Fig. 106). A very good trowel may also be
made from a discarded blade of a mowing machine (Fig. 107), and it
answers the purpose of a hand-weeder.
[Illustration: Fig. 106. Long-handled trowel.]
[Illustration: Fig. 107. Improvised trowel.]
[Illustration: Fig. 108. Weed-spud.]
[Illustration: Fig. 109. A good weed-spud.]
[Illustration: Fig. 110. Weed-cutter.]
[Illustration: Fig. 111. A weed-spud that lifts the weed.]
Weed-spuds are shown in Figs. 108 to 111. The first is particularly
serviceable in cutting docks and other strong weeds from lawns and
pastures. It is provided with a brace to allow it to be thrust into the
ground with the foot. It is seldom necessary to dig out perennial weeds
to the tips of their deep roots, if the crown is severed a short
distance below the surface.
Rollers.
[Illustration: Fig. 112. Hand-roller.] [Illustration: Fig. 113. Roller
and marker.]
It is often essential that the land be compacted after it has been
spaded or hoed, and some kind of hand-roller is then useful. Very
efficient iron rollers are in the market, but a good one can be made
from a hard chestnut or oak log, as shown in Fig. 112. (It should be
remembered that when the surface is hard and compact, water escapes
from it rapidly, and plants may suffer for moisture on arrival of warm
weather.) The roller is useful in two ways—to compact the
under-surface, in which case the surface should be again loosened as
soon as the rolling is done; and to firm the earth about seeds (page
98) or the roots of newly set plants.
Markers.
[Illustration: Fig. 114. Roller and marker.]
[Illustration: Fig. 115. Marking-stick.]
A marker may often be combined with the roller to good advantage, as in
Fig. 113. Ropes are secured about the cylinder at proper intervals, and
these mark the rows. Knots may be placed in the ropes to indicate the
places where plants are to be set or seeds dropped. An extension of the
same idea is seen in Fig. 114, which shows iron or wooden pegs that
make holes in which very small plants may be set. An L-shaped rod
projects at one side to mark the place of the next row.
[Illustration: Fig. 116. Tool for spacing plants.]
[Illustration: Fig. 117. Barrow rigged with a marker.]
[Illustration: Fig. 118. Hand sled-marker.]
In most cases the best and most expeditious method of marking out the
garden is by the use of the garden line, which is secured to a reel
(Fig. 96), but various other devices are often useful. For very small
beds, drills or furrows may be made by a simple marking-stick (Fig.
115). A handy marker is shown in Fig. 116. A marker can be rigged to a
wheel-barrow, as in Fig. 117. A rod is secured underneath the front
truss, and from its end an adjustable trailer, B, is hung. The wheel of
the barrow marks the row, and the trailer indicates the place of the
next row, thereby keeping the rows parallel. A hand sled-marker is
shown in Fig. 118, and a similar device may be secured to the frame of
a sulky cultivator (Fig. 119) or other wheel tool. A good adjustable
sled-marker is outlined in Fig. 120.
[Illustration: Fig. 119. Trailing sled-marker.]
[Illustration: Fig. 120. Adjustable sled-marker.]
_Enriching the land_.
Two problems are involved in the fertilizing of the land: the direct
addition of plant-food, and the improvement of the physical structure
of the soil. The latter office is often the more important.
Lands that, on the one hand, are very hard and solid, with a tendency
to bake, and, on the other, that are loose and leachy, are very greatly
benefited by the addition of organic matter. When this organic
matter—as animal and plant remains—decays and becomes thoroughly
incorporated with the soil, it forms what is called humus. The addition
of this humus makes the land mellow, friable, retentive of moisture,
and promotes the general chemical activities of the soil. It also puts
the soil in the best physical condition for the comfort and well-being
of the plants. Very many of the lands that are said to be exhausted of
plant-food still contain enough potash, phosphoric acid, and lime, and
other fertilizing elements, to produce good crops; but they have been
greatly injured in their physical condition by long-continued cropping,
injudicious tillage, and the withholding of vegetable matter. A part of
the marked results secured from the plowing under of clover is due to
the incorporation of vegetable matter, wholly aside from the addition
of fertilizing material; and this is emphatically true of clover
because its deep-growing roots penetrate and break up the subsoil.
Muck and leafmold are often very useful in ameliorating either very
hard or very loose lands. Excellent humous material may be constantly
at hand if the leaves, garden refuse, and some of the manure are piled
and composted (p. 114). If the pile is turned several times a year, the
material becomes fine and uniform in texture.
The various questions associated with the fertilizing of the land are
too large to be considered in detail here. Persons who desire to
familiarize themselves with the subject should consult recent books. It
may be said, however, that, as a rule, most lands contain all the
elements of plant-food in sufficient quantities except potash,
phosphoric acid, and nitrogen. In many cases, lime is very beneficial
to land, usually because it corrects acidity and has a mechanical
effect in pulverizing and flocculating clay and in cementing sands.
The chief sources of commercial potash are muriate of potash, sulfate
of potash, and wood ashes. For general purposes, the muriate of potash
is now recommended, because it is comparatively cheap and the
composition is uniform. A normal application of muriate of potash is
200 to 300 pounds to the acre; but on some lands, where the greatest
results are demanded, sometimes as much as twice this application may
be made.
Phosphoric acid is got in dissolved South Carolina and Florida rock and
in various bone preparations. These materials are applied at the rate
of 200 to 400 pounds to the acre.
Commercial nitrogen is secured chiefly in the form of animal refuse, as
blood and tankage, and in nitrate of soda. It is more likely to be lost
by leaching through the land than the mineral substances are,
especially if the land lacks humus. Nitrate of soda is very soluble,
and should be applied in small quantities at intervals. Nitrogen, being
the element which is mostly conducive to vegetative growth, tends to
delay the season of maturity if applied heavily or late in the season.
From 100 to 300 pounds of nitrate of soda may be applied to the acre,
but it is ordinarily better to make two or three applications at
intervals of three to six weeks. Fertilizing materials may be applied
either in fall or spring; but in the case of nitrate of soda it is
usually better not to apply in the fall unless the land has plenty of
humus to prevent leaching, or on plants that start very early in the
spring.
Fertilizing material is sown broadcast, or it may be scattered lightly
in furrows underneath the seeds, and then covered with earth. If sown
broadcast, it may be applied either after the seeds are sown or before.
It is usually better to apply it before, for although the rains carry
it down, nevertheless the upward movement of water during the dry
weather of the summer tends to bring it back to the surface. It is
important that large lumps of fertilizer, especially muriate of potash
and nitrate of soda, do not fall near the crowns of the plants;
otherwise the plants may be seriously injured. It is a general
principle, also, that it is best to use more sparingly of fertilizers
than of tillage. The tendency is to make fertilizers do penance for the
sins of neglect, but the results do not often meet one’s expectations.
If one has only a small garden or a home yard, it ordinarily will not
pay him to buy the chemicals separately, as suggested above, but he may
purchase a complete fertilizer that is sold under a trademark or brand,
and has a guaranteed analysis. If one is raising plants chiefly for
their foliage, as rhubarb and ornamental bushes, he should choose a
fertilizer comparatively rich in nitrogen; but if he desires chiefly
fruit and flowers, the mineral elements, as potash and phosphoric acid,
should usually be high. If one uses the chemicals, it is not necessary
that they be mixed before application; in fact, it is usually better
not to mix them, because some plants and some soils need more of one
element than of another. Just what materials, and how much, different
soils and plants require must be determined by the grower himself by
observation and experiment; and it is one of the satisfactions of
gardening to arrive at discrimination in such matters.
Muriate of potash costs $40 and upwards per ton, sulfate about $48,
dissolved boneblack about $24, ground bone about $30, kainit about $13,
and nitrate of soda about 2-1/4 cents per pound. These prices vary, of
course, with the composition or mechanical condition of materials, and
with the state of the market. The average composition of unleached wood
ashes in the market is about as follows: Potash, 5.2 per cent;
phosphoric acid, 1.70 per cent; lime, 34 per cent; magnesia, 3.40 per
cent. The average composition of kainit is 13.54 per cent potash, 1.15
per cent lime.
The fact that the soil itself is the greatest storehouse of plant-food
is shown by the following average of thirty-five analyses of the total
content of the first eight inches of surface soils, per acre: 3521
pounds of nitrogen, 4400 pounds of phosphoric acid, 19,836 pounds of
potash. Much of this is unavailable, but good tillage, green-manuring,
and proper management tend to unlock it and at the same time to save it
from waste.
[Illustration: Fig 121. A good cart for collecting leaves and other
materials.]
Every careful gardener will take satisfaction in saving leaves and
trimmings and stable refuse and making compost of it to supplement the
native supplies in the soil. Some out-of-the-way corner will be found
for a permanent pile, with room for piling it over from time to time.
The pile will be screened by his garden planting. (Figure 121 suggests
a useful cart for collecting such materials.) He will also save the
power of his land by changing his crops to other parts of the garden,
year by year, not growing his China asters or his snap-dragons or his
potatoes or strawberries continuously on the same area; and thus, also,
will his garden have a new face every year.
Lest the reader may get the idea that there is no limit to be placed on
the enriching of the soil, I will caution him at the end of my
discussion that he may easily make the place so rich that some plants
will overgrow and will not come into flowering or fruiting before
frost, and flowers may lack brilliancy. On very rich land, scarlet sage
will grow to great size but will not bloom in the northern season;
sweet peas will run to vine; gaillardias and some other plants will
break down; tomatoes and melons and peppers may be so late that the
fruit will not ripen. Only experience and good judgment will safeguard
the gardener as to how far he should or should not go.
CHAPTER V
THE HANDLING OF THE PLANTS
There is a knack in the successful handling of plants that it is
impossible to describe in print. All persons can improve their practice
through diligent reading of useful gardening literature, but no amount
of reading and advice will make a good gardener of a person who does
not love to dig in a garden or who does not have a care for plants just
because they are plants.
To grow a plant well, one must learn its natural habits. Some persons
learn this as if by intuition, acquiring the knowledge from close
discrimination of the behavior of the plant. Often they are themselves
unconscious of this knack of knowing what will make the plant to
thrive; but it is not at all necessary to have such an intuitive
judgment to enable one to be even more than a fairly good gardener.
Diligent attention to the plant’s habits and requirements, and a real
regard for the plant’s welfare, will make any person a successful
plant-grower.
Some of the things that a person should know about any plant he would
grow are these:—
Whether the plant matures in the first, second, third, or subsequent
years; and when it naturally begins to fail.
The time of the year or season in which it normally grows, blooms, or
fruits; and whether it can be forced at other seasons.
Whether it prefers a situation dry or moist or wet, hot or cool, sunny
or shady.
Its preferences as to soil, whether very rich or only moderately rich,
sand or loam, or peat or clay.
Its hardiness as to frost, wind, drought, heat.
Whether it has any special requirements as to germination, and whether
it transplants well.
Whether it is specially liable to attack by insects or disease.
Whether it has a special inability to grow two years in succession on
the same land.
Having suited the situation to the plant, and having prepared the
ground well and made a resolution to keep it well, special attention
must be given to such matters as these:—
Guarding from all insects and diseases; and also from cats and chickens
and dogs; and likewise from rabbits and mice.
Protecting from weeds.
Pruning, in the case of fruit trees and bushes, and also of ornamental
woody plants on occasion, and sometimes even of annual herbs.
Staking and tying, particularly of sprawly garden flowers.
Persistent picking of seed pods or dead flowers from flower plants, in
order to conserve the strength of the plant and to prolong its season
of bloom.
Watering in dry weather (but not sprinkling or dribbling).
Thorough winter protecting of plants that need it.
Removing dead leaves, broken branches, weak and sickly plants, and
otherwise keeping the place tidy and trim.
_Sowing the seeds_.
Prepare the surface earth well, to make a good seed-bed. Plant when the
ground is moist, if possible, and preferably just before a rain if the
soil is of such character that it will not bake. For shallow-planted
seeds, firm the earth above them by walking over the row or by patting
it down with a hoe. Special care should be exercised not to sow very
small and slow-germinating seeds, as celery, carrot, onion, in poorly
prepared soil or in ground that bakes. With such seeds it is well to
sow seeds of radish or turnip, for these germinate quickly and break
the crust, and also mark the row so that tillage may be begun before
the regular-crop seeds are up.
Land may be prevented from baking over the seeds by scattering a very
thin layer of fine litter, as chaff, or of sifted moss or mold, over
the row. A board is sometimes laid on the row to retain the moisture,
but it must be lifted gradually just as soon as the plants begin to
break the ground, or the plants will be greatly injured. Whenever
practicable, seed-beds of celery and other slow-germinating seeds
should be shaded. If the beds are watered, be careful that the soil is
not packed by the force of the water or baked by the sun. In thickly
sown seed-beds, thin or transplant the plants as soon as they have made
their first true leaves.
For most home-grounds, seeds may be sown by hand, but for large areas
of one crop, one of the many kinds of seed-sowers may be used. The
particular methods of sowing seeds are usually specified in the seed
catalogues, if other than ordinary treatment is required. The
sled-markers (already described, p. 108) open a furrow of sufficient
depth for the planting of most seeds. If marker furrows are not
available, a furrow may be opened with a hoe for such deep-planted
seeds as peas and sweet peas, or by a trowel or end of a rakestale for
smaller seeds. In narrow beds or boxes, a stick or ruler (Fig. 115) may
be used for opening creases to receive the seeds.
The depth at which seeds are to be planted varies with the kind, the
soil and its preparation, the season, and whether they are planted in
the open or in the house. In boxes and under glass, it is a good rule
that the seed be sown at a depth equal to twice its own diameter, but
deeper sowing is usually necessary out of doors, particularly in hot
and dry weather. Strong and hardy seeds, as peas, sweet peas, large
fruit-tree seeds, may be planted three to six inches deep. Tender
seeds, that are injured by cold and wet, may be planted after the
ground is settled and warm at a greater depth than before that season.
As a rule, nothing is gained by sowing tender seeds before the weather
is thoroughly settled and the ground warm.
_Propagating by cuttings_.
Many common plants are propagated by cuttings rather than by seeds,
particularly when it is desired to increase a particular variety.
Cuttings are parts of plants inserted in soil or water with the
intention that they shall grow and make new plants. They are of various
kinds. They may be classified, with reference to the age of the wood or
tissue, into two classes; viz. those made from perfectly hard or
dormant wood (taken from the winter twigs of trees and bushes), and
those made from more or less immature or growing wood. They may be
classified again in respect to the part of the plants from which they
are taken, as root-cuttings, tuber-cuttings (as the ordinary “seed”
planted for potatoes), stem-cuttings, and leaf-cuttings.
Dormant stem-cuttings.
[Illustration: Fig. 122. The planting of the dormant-wood cuttings.]
Dormant-wood cuttings are used for grapes (Fig. 122), currants,
gooseberries, willows, poplars, and many other kinds of soft-wooded
trees and shrubs. Such cuttings are ordinarily taken in fall or winter,
but cut into the proper lengths and then buried in sand or moss where
they do not freeze, in order that the lower end may heal over or
callous. In the spring these cuttings are set in the ground, preferably
in a rather sandy and well-drained place.
[Illustration: Fig. 123. Carnation cutting.]
Usually, hardwood cuttings are made with two to four joints or buds,
and when they are planted, only the upper bud projects above the
ground. They may be planted erect, as Fig. 122 shows, or somewhat
slanting. In order that the cutting may reach down to moist earth, it
is desirable that it should not be less than 6 in. long; and it is
sometimes better if it is 8 to 12 in. If the wood is short-jointed,
there may be several buds on a cutting of this length; and in order to
prevent too many shoots from arising from these buds the lowermost buds
are often cut out. Roots will start as readily if the lower buds are
removed, since the buds grow into shoots and not into roots.
Cuttings of currants, grapes, gooseberries, and the like may be set in
rows that are far enough apart to admit of easy tillage either with
horse or hand tools, and the cuttings may be placed 3 to 8 in. apart in
the row. The English varieties of gooseberries, considerably grown in
this country, do not propagate readily from cuttings.
After the cuttings have grown one season, the plants are usually
transplanted and given more room for the second year’s growth, after
which time they are ready to be set in permanent plantations. In some
cases, the plants are set at the end of the first year; but two-year
plants are stronger and usually preferable.
Cuttings of roots.
Root-cuttings are used for blackberries, raspberries, and a few other
things. They are ordinarily made of roots from the size of a lead
pencil to one’s little finger, and are cut in lengths from 3 to 5 in.
long. The cuttings are stored the same as stem-cuttings and allowed to
callous. In the spring they are planted in a horizontal or nearly
horizontal position in moist sandy soil, being entirely covered to a
depth of 1 or 2 in.
Green cuttings.
[Illustration: Fig. 124. Verbena cutting.]
Softwood or greenwood cuttings are usually made of wood that is mature
enough to break when it is bent sharply. When the wood is so soft that
it will bend and not break, it is too immature, in the majority of
plants, for the making of good cuttings.
[Illustration: Fig. 125. Leaf-cutting.]
One to two joints is the proper length of a greenwood cutting. If of
two joints, the lower leaves should be cut off and the upper leaves cut
in two so that they do not present their entire surface to the air and
thereby evaporate the plant juices too rapidly. If the cutting is of
only one joint, the lower end is usually cut just above a joint. In
either case, the cuttings are usually inserted in sand or well-washed
gravel, nearly or quite up to the leaves. Keep the bed uniformly moist
throughout its depth, but avoid any soil which holds so much moisture
that it becomes muddy and sour. These cuttings should be shaded until
they begin to emit their roots. Coleus, geraniums, fuchsias,
carnations, and nearly all the common greenhouse and house plants, are
propagated by these cuttings or slips (Figs. 123, 124).
Cuttings of leaves.
Leaf-cuttings are often used for the fancy-leaved begonias, gloxinias,
and a few other plants. The young plant usually arises most readily
from the leaf-stalk or petiole. The leaf, therefore, is inserted into
the ground much as a green cutting is. Begonia leaves will throw out
young plants from the main ribs when these veins or ribs are cut.
Therefore, well-grown and firm begonia leaves are sometimes laid flat
on the sand and the main veins cut; then the leaf is weighted down with
pebbles or pegs so that these cut surfaces come into intimate contact
with the soil beneath. The usual way, however, is to cut a triangular
piece of the leaf (Fig. 125) and insert the tip in sand. So long as the
cutting is alive, do not be discouraged, even if it do not start.
VIII. A well-planted entrance. Common trees and bushes, with Boston ivy
on the post, and _Berberis Thunbergii_ in front. VIII. A well-planted
entrance. Common trees and bushes, with Boston ivy on the post, and
_Berberis Thunbergii_ in front.
General treatment of cuttings.
In the growing of all greenwood and leaf-cuttings, it is well to
remember that they should have a gentle bottom heat; the soil should be
such that it will hold moisture and yet not remain wet; the air about
the tops should not become close and stagnant, else the plants will
damp off; and the tops should be shaded for a time. In order to control
all the conditions, such cuttings are grown under cover, as in a
greenhouse, coldframe, or a box in the residence window.
[Illustration: Fig. 126. Cuttings inserted in a double pot.]
An excellent method of starting cuttings in the living room is to make
a double pot, as shown in Fig. 126. Inside a 6-in. pot set a 4-in. pot.
Fill the bottom, _a_, with gravel or bits of brick, for drainage. Plug
the hole in the inside pot. Fill the spaces between, _c_, with earth,
and in this set the cuttings. Water may be poured into the inner pot,
_b_, to supply the moisture.
_Transplanting young seedlings_.
[Illustration: Fig. 127. To check evaporation at transplanting.]
In the transplanting of cabbages, tomatoes, flowers, and all plants
recently started from seeds, it is important that the ground be
thoroughly fined and compacted. Plants usually live better if
transplanted into ground that has been freshly turned. If possible,
transplant in cloudy or rainy weather, particularly if late in the
season. Firm the earth snugly about the roots with the hands or feet,
in order to bring up the soil moisture; but it is generally best to
rake the surface in order to reëstablish the earth-mulch, unless the
plants are so small that their roots cannot reach through the mulch (p.
98).
If the plants are taken from pots, water the pots some time in advance,
and the ball of earth will fall out when the pot is inverted and tapped
lightly. In taking up plants from the ground, it is advisable, also, to
water them well some time before removing; the earth may then be held
on the roots. See that the watering is done far enough in advance to
allow the water to settle away and distribute itself; the earth should
not be muddy when the plants are removed.
[Illustration: Fig. 128. Plants sheared and not sheared when
transplanted.]
In order to reduce the evaporation from the plant, shingles may be
stuck into the ground to shade the plant; or a screen may be improvised
with pieces of paper (Fig. 122), tin cans, inverted flower-pots,
coverings of brush, or other means.
[Illustration: Fig. 129. Where to shear the tops of young plants.]
It is nearly always advisable to remove some of the foliage,
particularly if the plant has several leaves and if it has not been
grown in a pot, and also if the transplanting is done in warm weather.
Figure 128 shows a good treatment for transplanted plants. With the
foliage all left on, the plants are likely to behave as in the upper
row; but with most of it cut off, as in the lower row, there is little
wilting, and new leaves soon start. Figure 129 also shows what part of
the leaves may be cut off on transplanting. If the ground is freshly
turned and the transplanting is well done, it rarely will be necessary
to water the plants; but if watering is necessary, it should be done at
nightfall, and the surface should be loosened the next morning or as
soon as it becomes dry.
[Illustration: Fig. 130. Trowel dibber.]
[Illustration: Fig. 131. The dibber.]
[Illustration: Fig. 132. Home-made padded dibber.]
[Illustration: Fig. 133. Dibber and crow-bar combined.]
In the transplanting of young plants, some kind of a dibber should be
used to make the holes. Dibbers make holes without removing any of the
earth. A good form of dibber is shown in Fig. 130, which is like a flat
or plane trowel. Many persons prefer a cylindrical and conical dibber,
like that shown in Fig. 131. For hard soils and larger plants, a strong
dibber may be made from a limb that has a right-angled branch to serve
as a handle. This handle may be softened by slipping a piece of rubber
hose on it (Fig. 132). A long iron dibber, which may also be used as a
crow-bar, is shown in Fig. 133. In transplanting with the dibber, a
hole is first made by a thrust of the tool, and the earth is then
pressed against the root by means of the foot, hand, or the dibber
itself (as in Fig. 131). The hole is not filled by putting in dirt at
the top.
[Illustration: Fig. 134. Strawberry planter.]
For large plants, a broader dibber may be used. An implement like that
shown in Fig. 134 is useful for setting strawberries and other plants
with large roots. It is made of two-inch plank, with a block on top to
act as foot-rest and to prevent the blade from going too deep. In order
to provide space for the foot and easily to direct the thrust, the
handle may be placed at one side of the middle. For plunging pots, a
dibber like that shown in Fig. 135 is useful, particularly when the
soil is so hard that a long-pointed tool is necessary. The bottom of
the hole may be filled with earth before the pot is inserted; but it is
often advisable to leave the vacant space below (as in _b_) to provide
drainage, to keep the plant from rooting, and to prevent earth-worms
from entering the hole in the bottom of the pot. For smaller pots, the
tool may be inserted a less depth (as at _c_).
[Illustration: Fig. 135. The plunging of pots.]
_Transplanting established plants and trees_.
[Illustration: Fig. 136. Setting large tub-plants in the lawn.]
In setting potted plants out of doors, it is nearly always advisable to
plunge them,—that is to set the pots into the earth,—unless the place
is very wet. The pots are then watered by the rainfall, and demand
little care. If the plants are to be returned to the house in the fall,
they should not be allowed to root through the hole in the pot, and the
rooting may be prevented by turning the pot around every few days.
Large decorative plants may be made to look as if growing naturally in
the lawn by sinking the pot or box just below the surface and rolling
the sod over it, as suggested in Fig. 136. A space around and below the
tub may be provided to insure drainage.
Tub-plants.
[Illustration: Fig. 137. Plant-box with a movable side.]
For the shifting of very large tub-plants, a box or tub with movable
sides, as in Fig. 137, is handy and efficient. The plant-box
recommended to parties who grew plants for exhibition at the World’s
Fair is shown in Fig. 138. It is made of strong boards or planks. At A
is shown the inside of one of two opposite sections or sides, four feet
wide at top, three feet wide at bottom, and three feet high. The cleats
are two-by-four scantlings, through which holes are bored to admit the
bolts with which the box is to be held together. B is an outside view
of one of the alternating sections, three feet four inches wide at top,
two feet four inches at bottom, and three feet deep. A one-by-six strip
is nailed through the center to give strength. C is an end view of A,
showing the bolts and also a two-by-four cleat to which the bottom is
to be nailed. This box was used mostly for transporting large growing
stock to the exposition, the stock having been dug from the open and
the box secured around the ball of earth.
[Illustration: Fig. 138. Box for transporting large transplanted
stock.]
When to transplant.
In general, it is best to set hardy plants in the fall, particularly if
the ground is fairly dry and the exposure is not too bleak. To this
class belong most of the fruit trees and ornamental trees and shrubs;
also hardy herbs, as columbines, peonies, lilies, bleeding-hearts, and
the like. They should be planted as soon as they are thoroughly mature,
so that the leaves begin to fall naturally. If any leaves remain on the
tree or bush at planting time, strip them off, unless the plant is an
evergreen. It is generally best not to cut back fall-planted trees to
the full extent desired, but to shorten them three-fourths of the
required amount in the fall, and take off the remaining fourth in the
spring, so that no dead or dry tips are left on the plant. Evergreens,
as pines and spruces, are not headed-in much, and usually not at all.
All tender and very small plants should be set in the spring, in which
case very early planting is desirable; and spring planting is always to
be advised when the ground is not thoroughly drained and well prepared.
Depth to transplant.
In well-compacted land, trees and shrubs should be set at about the
same depth as they stood in the nursery, but if the land has been
deeply trenched or if it is loose from other causes, the plants should
be set deeper, because the earth will probably settle. The hole should
be filled with fine surface earth. It is generally not advisable to
place manure in the hole, but if it is used, it should be of small
amount and very thoroughly mixed with the earth, else it will cause the
soil to dry out. In lawns and other places where surface tillage cannot
be given, a light mulch of litter or manure may be placed about the
plants; but the earth-mulch (page 98), when it can be secured, is much
the best conserver of moisture.
Making the rows straight.
[Illustration: Fig. 139. A planting board.]
In order to set trees in rows, it is necessary to use a garden line
(Fig. 96), or to mark out the ground with some of the devices already
described (Figs. 113-120); or in large areas, the place may be staked
out. In planting orchards, the area is laid out (preferably by a
surveyor) with two or more rows of stakes so placed that a man may
sight from one fixed point to another. Two or three men work to best
advantage in such planting.
[Illustration: Fig. 140. Device for placing the tree.]
There are various devices for locating the place of the stake after the
stake has been removed and the hole dug, in case the area is not
regularly staked out in such a way that sighting across the area may be
employed. One of the simplest is shown in Fig. 139. It is a narrow and
thin board with a notch in the center and a peg in either end, one of
the pegs being stationary. The implement is so placed that the notch
meets the stake, then one end of it is thrown out of the way until the
hole is dug. When the implement is brought again to its original
position, the notch mark’s the place of the stake and the tree. Figure
140 is a device with a lid, in the end of which is a notch to mark the
place of the stake. This lid is thrown back, as shown by the dotted
lines, when the hole is being dug. Figure 141 shows a method of
bringing trees in row by measuring from a line.
[Illustration: Fig. 141. Lining a tree from a stake.]
Cutting-back; filling.
In the planting of any tree or bush, the roots should be cut back
beyond all breaks and serious bruises, and fine earth should be
thoroughly filled in and firmed about them, as in Fig. 142. No
implement is so good as the fingers for working the soil about the
roots. If the tree has many roots, work it up and down slightly several
times during the filling of the hole, to settle the earth in place.
When the earth is thrown in carelessly, the roots are jammed together,
and often an empty place is left beneath the crown, as in Fig. 143,
which causes the roots to dry out.
[Illustration: Fig. 142: Proper planting of a tree.]
[Illustration: Fig. 143: Careless planting of a tree.]
[Illustration: Fig. 144. Pruned young tree.] [Illustration: Fig. 145.
Pruned young tree.]
The marks on the tops of these trees in Figs. 142 and 143 show where
the branches may be cut. See also Fig. 152. Figures 144 and 145 show
the tops of trees after pruning. Strong branchy trees, as apples,
pears, and ornamental trees, are usually headed back in this way, upon
planting. If the tree has one straight leader and many or several
slender branches (Fig. 146), it is usually pruned, as in Fig. 147, each
branch being cut back to one or two buds. If there are no branches, or
very few of them,—in which case there will be good buds upon the main
stem,—the leader may be cut back a third or half its length, to a mere
whip. Ornamental bushes with long tops are usually cut back a third or
a half when set, as shown in Fig. 45.
Always leave a little of the small bud-making growth. The practice of
cutting back shade trees to mere long clubs, or poles, with no small
twigs, is to be discouraged. The tree in such case is obliged to force
out adventitious buds from the old wood, and it may not have vigor
enough to do this; and the process may be so long delayed as to allow
the tree to be overtaken by drought before it gets a start.
Removing very large trees.
[Illustration: Fig. 146: Peach tree.] [Illustration: Fig. 147: Peach
tree pruned for planting.]
Very large trees can often be moved with safety. It is essential that
the transplanting be done when the trees are perfectly dormant,—winter
being preferable,—that a large mass of earth and roots be taken with
the tree, and that the top be vigorously cut back. Large trees are
often moved in winter on a stone-boat, by securing a large ball of
earth frozen about the roots. This frozen ball is secured by digging
about the tree for several days in succession, so that the freezing
progresses with the excavation. A good device for moving such trees is
shown in Fig. 148. The trunk of the tree is securely wrapped with
burlaps or other soft material, and a ring or chain is then secured
about it. A long pole, _b_, is run over the truck of a wagon and the
end of it is secured to the chain or ring upon the tree. This pole is a
lever for raising the tree out of the ground. A team is hitched at _a_,
and a man holds the pole _b_. Other and more elaborate devices are in
use, but this explains the idea and is therefore sufficient for the
present purpose; for when a person desires to remove a very large tree
he should secure the services of an expert.
[Illustration: Fig. 148: Moving a large tree.]
The following more explicit directions for moving large trees are by
Edward Hicks, who has had much experience in the business, and who made
this report to the press a few years ago: “In moving large trees, say
those ten to twelve inches in diameter and twenty-five to thirty feet
high, it is well to prepare them by trimming and cutting or sawing off
the roots at a proper distance from the trunks, say six to eight feet,
in June. The cut roots heal over and send out fibrous roots, which
should not be injured more than is necessary in moving the trees next
fall or spring. Young, thrifty maples and elms, originally from the
nursery, do not need such preparation nearly as much as other and older
trees. In moving a tree, we begin by digging a wide trench six to eight
feet from it, leaving all possible roots fast to it. By digging under
the tree in the wide trench, and working the soil out of the roots by
means of round or dull-pointed sticks, the soil falls into the cavity
made under the tree. Three or four men in as many hours could get so
much of the soil away from the roots that it would be safe to attach a
rope and tackle to the upper part of the trunk and to some adjoining
post or tree for the purpose of pulling the tree over. A good quantity
of bagging must be put around the tree under the rope to prevent
injury, and care should be taken that the pulling of the rope does not
split off or break a limb. A team is hitched to the end of the draft
rope, and slowly driven in the proper direction to pull the tree over.
If the tree does not readily tip over, dig under and cut off any fast
root. While it is tipped over, work out more of the soil with the
sticks. Now pass a large rope, double, around a few large roots close
to the tree, leaving the ends of the rope turned up by the trunk to be
used in lifting the tree at the proper time. Tip the tree in the
opposite direction and put another large rope around the large roots
close to the trunk; remove more soil and see that no roots are fast to
the ground. Four guy-ropes attached to the upper parts of the tree, as
shown in the cut (Fig. 149), should be put on properly and used to
prevent the tree from tipping over too far as well as to keep it
upright. A good deal of the soil can be put back in the hole without
covering the roots to get it out of the way of the machine. The latter
can now be placed about the tree by removing the front part, fastened
by four bolts, placing the frame with the hind wheels around the tree
and replacing the front parts. Two timbers, three-by-nine inches, and
twenty feet long, are now placed on the ground under the hind wheels,
and in front of them, parallel to each other for the purpose of keeping
the hind wheels up out of the big hole when drawing the tree away; and
they are also used while backing the hind wheels across the new hole in
which the tree is to be planted. The machine (Figs. 149, 150) consists
of a hind axle twelve feet long, and broad-tired wheels. The frame is
made of spruce three-by-eight inches and twenty feet long. The braces
are three-by-five inches and ten feet long, and upright three-by-nine
inches and three feet high; these are bolted to the hind axle and main
frame. The front axle has a set of blocks bolted together and of
sufficient height to support the front end of the frame. Into the top
timbers, three-by-six inches, hollows are cut at the proper distances
to receive the ends of two locust rollers. A windlass or winch is put
at each end of the frame, by which trees can easily and steadily be
lifted and lowered, the large double ropes passi
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