This section is from the book "What England Can Teach Us About Gardening", by Wilhelm Miller. Also available from Amazon: What England Can Teach Us About Gardening.
Having told the most important lessons of a general nature which England can teach us about garden cities, I now wish to record some technical gardening lessons which we can learn from such a beautiful place as Bournville.
1. Ordinary fruit trees are too big for a city lot. Even half dwarfs take up too much room. Dwarf bushes and pyramids are the best (see plate 57). In this way every one at Bournville has a dozen varieties of tree fruits on his place.
2. The finest street effects are made by using only one kind of tree on a street and spacing the trees at regular intervals (see plate 58). Thus, Acacia Road is planted with the rose acacia (Robinia hispida), a small tree with showy pink flowers which does not rob the gardens as elms would.
3. Streets may be made to look warm in winter and cool in summer by following the Bournville plan. In cold weather red brick and English ivy are comforting. In hot weather Bournville looks cler.n and cool, because every street is lined with trees and every yard is surrounded by a hawthorn hedge, so that the dominant effect is green.
4. More and better individuality in homes can be had by using a different set of climbers than by architectural ornamentation. This one idea will ultimately save millions of dollars (see plate 59). In Bournville English ivy is generally grown on north walls while the south and west are used for trained fruits and flowering climbers.
5. There is no danger of monotony in such streets, because every front yard has a different scheme of flower beds. The favourite bedding plants at Bournville are tufted pansies, pinks, and calceolarias, the last of which are not hardy in America. Every yard has either climbing or standard roses. We could use ramblers.
6. Every vacant lot could be made beautiful by giving poor people a chance to raise vegetables thereon. Every spare foot of ground in Bournville is put into allotment gardens, and when the front of such a lot is needed for houses the back part is in splendid condition for a garden.
7. In a garden city trees and shrubs can be kept from insect pests and diseases by public spraying. The hawthorn ermine moth threatened to destroy all the hedges in Bournville. Private contractors might use an arsenate on the foliage and children might be poisoned. Bournville will use a caustic spray in winter on the eggs and the cost of exterminating or controlling the insect may be only #700 or #800. The Village Trust will pay this and the people will never feel the expense.
 
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