Manual of Gardening | Page 6

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).
[Illustration 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