Manual of Gardening Part 2

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.

Reduced to a single expression, all this means that the greatest artistic value in planting lies in the effect of the ma.s.s, and not in the individual plant. A ma.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 compa.s.s with his affections.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10 A native fence-row]

[Il.u.s.tration: Fig. 11 Birds build their nests here]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12. A free-and-easy planting of things wild and tame.]

These ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.s in all the world possesses. He knows that the birds build their nests in the tangle and the rabbits find it a covert.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13. An open treatment of a school-ground. More trees might be placed in the area, if desired.]

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.

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.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14. A rill much as nature made it.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15. A rill "improved," so that it will not look "ragged" and unkempt.]

It is not enough that trees and bushes be planted in ma.s.ses. They must be kept in ma.s.ses by letting them grow freely in a natural way. The pruning-knife is the most inveterate enemy of shrubbery. Pictures 16 and 17 ill.u.s.trate 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 16. The making of a good group, but spoiled by the pruning shears.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 17. The three guardsmen.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18 A bit of semi-rustic work built into a native growth]

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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses.

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.

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 gra.s.s; 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19 Hole-in-the-ground gardening]

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 spa.r.s.e 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 20. Worth paying admittance price to see!]

Flower-borders.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 21 An artist's flower border]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 22. Petunias against a background of osiers.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 23. A sowing of flowers along a marginal planting.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ma.s.s of its kind and color, and the effect was fine. In the middle was a plantation of hundreds of clumps of j.a.pan 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 pa.s.sed. 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.

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 gra.s.ses and aster-stems hold their banners above the snow and are a source of delight to every frolicsome bevy of s...o...b..rds.

I have spoken of a weedland to suggest how simple and easy a thing it is to make an attractive ma.s.s-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.