Manual of Gardening Part 3

[Ill.u.s.tration: 26. Making the most of a rock.]

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._

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 j.a.panese _Rosa rugosa,_ however, have distinct merit for ma.s.s 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 un.o.bscured. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 27. The plant-form in a perennial salvia.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 28. Funkia, or day-lily. Where lies the chief interest,--in the plant-form or in the bloom?]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 29. A large-leaved nicotiana.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

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 spa.r.s.e 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 ma.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 31. Making a picture with rhubarb.]

Odd and formal trees.

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 ma.s.s of foliage (Fig. 32), as a promontory, adding zest and spirit to the border; it then has relation with the place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig 32. A weeping tree at one side of the grounds and supported by a background.]

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 ill.u.s.tration 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.trated in the common planting of willows and poplars about summer places or lake sh.o.r.es. 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 a.s.sumes 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 33. A spring expression worth securing. Catkins of the small poplar.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 34. Plant-form in cherries.--Reine Hortense.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 35. Morello 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 36. May Duke cherry.]

_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 ill.u.s.trate what I desire to teach.

A front yard example.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 37. The planting in a simple front yard.]

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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 ma.s.s. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 38. Plan of the planting shown in Fig. 37.]

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 pa.s.sage. 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 ma.s.s 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.

Another example.

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 s.p.a.ce.

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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 39. Diagram of a back-yard planting. 50 x 90 feet.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 40. The beginning of a landscape garden.]

A third example.

The making of a landscape picture is well ill.u.s.trated 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 41. The result in five years.]

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.