Part I: What England Can Teach Us About The Different Styles Of Gardening

Preface

The objects of this book are as follows: 1. To help toward making America one great garden as England is. 2. To set forth the noblest ideals that England can give us in all the different departm...

Chapter I. Landscape Gardening

Why England is called the most beautiful country in the world— How we imitate her wrongly, and the only way we can surpass her. AN AMERICAN'S first day in England, especially if he arrive in spri...

Landscape Gardening. Continued

So, too, with that other bugaboo — climate. Ask yourself, What is the most precious thing that climate can give to the landscape? Is it this or that plant, or is it luxuriance? Perhaps you would rat...

Chapter II. Formal Gardens

Why Americans lavish fabulous sums upon Italian gardens, and are usually disappointed with the results —A simple, orderly process by which perfection may be attained. TO MOST Americans formal ga...

Formal Gardens. Part 2

If, then, we know the proper spirit, what is the proper method? I believe it is impossible to have a perfect formal garden without expert advice. Yet if the expert has everything his own way the resul...

Formal Gardens. Part 3

Shall bedding plants be dominant? (See plate 10.) Not in a private place. Leave that style of gardening to public squares in cities. The shearing of coleus and other plants with gaudily coloured folia...

Chapter III. Living Outdoors

How each one of us can get more fun out of life and better health without loss of efficiency or waiting for an increased income. THE English people are said to have the reddest cheeks and best co...

Living Outdoors. Continued

There is only one other game in England which I think ought to become a universal passion with us and that is lawn bowls, or bowling on the green. Cricket takes too long; fox-hunting requires a leisur...

Chapter IV. Hardy Borders

Woful shortcomings of most American examples—A perfect sue-cession of flowers and a perfect colour scheme — The border should become a national institution. I THOUGHT I knew something about hardy b...

Hardy Borders. Continued

These are not mere tricks. They are examples of optical or colour laws that open a wonder world of delight, in which any one may be an explorer and discoverer. We miss all this if we scatter colours a...

Chapter V. Water Gardens

We can excel England on water-lilies, but have much to learn from her about design, arrangement, taste. WHAT we Americans strive hardest for in gardening, and oftenest miss, is what J. M. Barrie in...

Water Gardens. Continued

A beginner nearly always rejects native material, because he sees no point in cultivating what grows wild all about him. Yet the longer he lives the surer he is to give up most of the European materia...

Chapter VI. Wild Gardening

How we can obtain most of the charm of an English park in four years, while the doomed chestnut trees may pay the bills. THE first day I was in England I stepped into the grounds of an archery club...

Filling Meadows With Flowers

Our meadows can be filled with spring flowers without impairing the hay crop. Mr. Robinson's meadows contain millions of bulbous flowers, great sheets of checkered lilies {Fritillaria Melea-gris), and...

Wild Gardening By The Water Side

Water-lilies are naturalized on a great scale at Gravetye, and the picture on plate 20 shows a corner of one of the lakes where the water-lilies are just coming into bloom. This is a department of gar...

Wild Gardening Along The Roadside

The roadsides of England are often very dull to the pedestrian because the high hedges of hawthorn often cut off the view. But to those who drive or ride they are a dream of beauty, because the hedge ...

Chapter VII. Rock Gardening

How to cover rocky land with the most appropriate vegetation at the least expense instead of making a lawn or doing other foolish things. THE largest rock garden in England is that of Sir Frank Cri...

Rock Gardening. Continued

Or, if you have rocks exposed to full sunshine there is still a good choice, even in a climate that is hot and dry in summer. For three dollars you could have two hundred hardy cacti. (No one would wa...

Chapter VIII. Peat Gardens

How we can transform every bad-smelling, malaria-breeding, mosquito-haunted swamp into a healthful spot of unique beauty — no objection possible to bog gardens. COME now, gentle reader, confess tha...

Peat Gardens. Continued

Now let us make the circuit of this woodsy garden and enjoy a hundred flowers we have never seen before. The soil itself is a delight to walk upon, for it is a rich, spongy mass of reddish-brown peat,...

Chapter IX. Wall Gardening

Every one who wishes to protect fruit from thieves, every one who has to do with sloping land, and every one who has even a rudimentary love of privacy will find an important message here. WE ARE b...

Wall Gardening. Continued

Hire an ordinary labourer — no need of a high-priced stonemason or expert gardener. Provide him with a lot of alpine or rock-loving plants. And as each stone is laid, lay in some of these plants, spri...

Seven Reasons For High Walls

Meanwhile every one of us who owns a bit of sloping land can make a retaining wall that shall be a perennial vision of floral beauty. Every one who wishes to soften the newness or hardness of architec...

Chapter X. Rose Gardens

The wrong old notion that roses should be grown only for cut flowers or in a place apart, in bare dirt or in manure heaps — How roses may be restored to the garden with glorious new effects. THE mo...

Rose Gardens. Part 2

The most exquisite effect under roses is the lace work made by myriads of minute, starry, white flowers, especially the saxifrages, which make mossy cushions of foliage. At first I despaired of our ev...

Rose Gardens. Part 3

With these as a foundation we can build two American types or races of roses. We shall have bedding roses in every colour, that will bloom from June to frost, thus giving us the longest season of bloo...

Chapter XI. Indoor Gardens

The fun of having the best fruit, fresh vegetables all winter, and flowers the year round — The pleasure of collecting — A cheap greenhouse at last. THE English people seem to get about one hundred...

Indoor Gardens. Part 2

Perhaps my reader does not know these three types of greenhouse, and perhaps, therefore, he may not understand why they clash. Well, then, any florist's rose or carnation house is a plant factory. The...

Indoor Gardens. Part 3

England's greenhouse problems were three: to raise th best fruit, to harmonize the greenhouse with existing architecture, and to perfect the small, cheap greenhouse so that everybody could have one. T...

Chapter XII. Collecting And Making New Varieties

The sort of work that Luther Burbank does with flowers is commonly done in England by amateurs — Let us collect every variety of our favourite flower and then improve it. NEARLY all the good fello...

Collecting And Making New Varieties. Part 2

Just to illustrate what one amateur can do, take the case of the Shirley poppies. All the Shirley poppies in the world are the descendants of one wild poppy which was saved by an English clergyman in ...

Collecting And Making New Varieties. Part 3

But, granting that Mr. Burbank's results are more important than those of all the plant breeders who have ever lived, it does not follow that his methods are the best for the amateur. For then we shou...

Chapter XIII. Garden Cities

We can build small, new cities that are practically perfect, without philanthropic aid, simply by cooperation, and these cities may revolutionize the old ones. THE most perfect city I have ever see...

Garden Cities. Continued

Letchworth can never be crowded. The population is limited to 35,000, an average of nine persons to the acre for the whole tract, or twenty-three per acre for the town site. Twelve families to the acr...

Gardening Lessons From Bournville

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 beautifu...

Front Yard Gardens

This brings me to a very important question: Are hedges best for a front yard, or fences? Or should the front yard be left open? The Bournville people are absolutely sure that the hawthorn hedge ...

Part II: English Effects And American Materials

Chapter XIV. English Effects With Hardy Conifers

How we waste millions on material we should never buy and on effects we can never imitate—what the best english effects are and how we can reproduce the spirit of them with long-lived material — and h...

Our Equivalent For Yew

The yew is the most important ornamental conifer for England, chiefly because it is the longest-lived of all trees the English have. The Fotheringal yew, says Miss Rogers, proved by the rings on it...

Our Equivalent For The Cedar Of Lebanon

As the yew is the most decorative conifer in England, so the cedar of Lebanon is the most picturesque (see plates, 61, 63). You see it everywhere, centuries old, the pride of every country gentleman's...

Our Equivalents For Their Spruces

Another conifer that will grow a hundred feet in a century is the Douglas spruce. Indeed, I saw one at Dropmore, one' hundred and seventeen feet high, with a spread of one hundred feet, which came fro...

Our Equivalents For The "Big Trees"

How the soul of a Californian must rejoice when he sees a Sequoia gigantea that has grown a hundred feet in fifty years! I saw one at Dropmore that was ninety-eight feet high and planted about i860. T...

Our Equivalent For Redwood

The big tree cannot hold a candle to the redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) save in height. The tallest big tree I have heard of is three hundred and fifty feet high; the tallest redwood three hundred and...

Their Best Fir And Ours

England has no native fir (what is called Scotch fir is a pine), but the common fir of Europe, which one sees everywhere, is the silver fir (Abies Picea or pectinata). This is the one we waste our m...

Their Best Pine And Ours

The only pine native to England is the Scotch (Pinus sylvestris) and it is no wonder that we waste thousands of dollars on it, for in its own country it is very lovely. It is a picturesque pine, but...

Grotesque Conifers

An Alice-in-Wonderland tree that spoils many a fine park picture in England is the monkey puzzle (Araucaria imbricatd). In its native country, Chile, this tree doubtless fits and attains age and digni...

Chapter XV. English Effects With Broad Leaved Evergreens

We may get only three fourths of the English luxuriance, but we have more native species — Seven effects we can have and four we can't. IT IS no wonder that the myriads of Americans who visit Engla...

Many Fail On The Culture

The cultivation of broad-leaved evergreens is a mighty particular business. Like golf it is easy to understand, but not such a snap to play. Three fourths of the story, as Henry Hicks says, is the six...

More Get Fooled In Buying

But the greatest sink-hole for our money is the Dutch game. The cheapest evergreens you can buy are those freshly imported from Holland and as they always look the best, they are irresistible to a ...

How To Buy Hybrids

The ideal way to buy hybrid rhododendrons is to get only plants that have been propagated by layering. These are the costliest of all, because it is the slowest process, but such plants are, as a rule...

How To Buy The Species

For great mass effects the best rhododendrons are the two American species — Catawbiense and maximum. The best way to buy these is in car-load lots. Nursery-grown plants cost more than plants collecte...

How England Excels Us

How book notions change when one sees the real things! I was brought up to believe that England has the best climate in the world for evergreens, and consequently it is folly to try to rival her. The ...

How We Can Excel England

The only place where we can reproduce practically all the English effects with English material is Oregon, for that is about the only place that combines a cool, moist summer with a mild winter. Howev...

The Spring Garden Effect

Undoubtedly the most gorgeous flowering effect in the world is that of rhododendrons. (See plate 64.) True, roses and azaleas have a wider range of colours, while lilacs and hydrangeas have bigger tru...

The Peat Garden Effect

The great limitation of the spring garden, however, is that it omits the mountain laurel, which has the most exquisite flower of all broad-leaved evergreens, and our other great hero, Rhododendron max...

The Heather Effect

Whether it is possible for us to grow heather by the acre here or not I do not know. There is a big patch of it at the park in Halifax. It is a wonderful plant for waste places, covering miles of cold...

The Climbing Effects

The most precious evergreen climber in the world is the ivy, because it has been loved longest by the human race. Therefore we ought to grow it wherever we can, but only on stone and brick buildings. ...

The Carpeting Effect

There are four ways of carpeting the ground in England with evergreen creepers that thrive under trees and shrubs. The classical effect is that of ivy, which we can reproduce even in New England, wher...

The Foliage Effect

Of all the broad-leaved evergreens that are cultivated for foliage alone, box is undoubtedly the most important for Northern countries. True, holly has a deeper religious significance, and when it is ...

The City Effect

New York can never be as beautiful as London because she has no front yards. I saw thousands upon thousands of London yards full of matchless beauty. For they are hedged in by broad-leaved evergreens,...

The Winter Effect

America ought to be redeemed from its present bleakness and ugliness in winter. The chief elements in that reform will be the shrubs with vivid berries and branches (such as the Japanese barberry and ...

Four Effects We Can't Have

We can never hope for any tree effects among broad-leaved evergreens in the North. In England the holm oak, or ilex of Italian gardens (Quercus Ilex), will sometimes attain fifty feet. On the other ha...

Chapter XVI. English Effects With Hardy Trees

The two false gods we worship, Speed and Show — Our mania for abnormally quick and gaudy trees must give way to an enthusiasm for Permanence and Fitness. I D0 not blame the hundred thousand America...

The Private Forestry Effect

Everywhere in England you see private forests planted for profit. England first won her naval supremacy in ships built of English oak trees which were practically planted for the purpose on private es...

The Landscape Forestry Effect

By landscape forestry I mean the art of managing woods for pleasure. There are thousands upon thousands of private deer parks and game preserves in England, while here they are comparatively rare. O...

The Flowering Effect

The grandest flowering tree I saw in England is the horse chestnut. There is an avenue of horse chestnuts about a mile long at Bushey Park, and I fancy the trees are eighty feet high. (See plate 68.) ...

The Coloured Foliage Effect

Fortunately flowering trees are showy, as a rule, only when in bloom. Otherwise they would get stale, like a bed of Baby Rambler rose or any other ever-blooming bore. But purple leaves are vociferou...

The Cut Leaved Effect

Only one degree less vulgar than a preponderance of abnormally coloured foliage is a preponderance of cut-leaved trees. Must everything be shredded for us from breakfast food to the trees on our lawn?...

The Effect Of Formal Outlines

What possesses us to plant so many trees that are living cubes, globes, cones, and columns? A few may be appropriate in the garden, but rarely on the lawn. The most conspicuous of these forms is the c...

The Shade Effect

There is no sense in planting any of the trees that we commonly plant solely for shade, because they die too soon or get unsightly. If we need shade without delay we can build a veranda or summer hous...

The Age Effect

If your grounds are large enough for a tree that will grow a hundred feet high or more, plant an oak. (See plate 69). The grandest of American oaks is the white oak (Q. alba), and this is also the nea...

Chapter XVII. What America Can Teach England About Shrubs

The only important material except water-lilies in which we have a striking climatic advantage over England — Why we have ignored our opportunity and have even started on a false scent. THE only ma...

What America Can Teach England About Shrubs. Part 2

The only one of nature's suggestions we have followed is that which culminates in the spring garden. (See plate 73.) A superb example of banked shrubbery is on the estate of the late H. McK. Twombly...

What America Can Teach England About Shrubs. Part 3

The only part of this programme that seems hard is the selection of summer or foliage effects. But here's the answer to that — Cornus and Viburnum. (See plate 73.) We've got to have lots of those bush...

The Finishing Touches

Last of all come the finishing touches. You want some edging plants that arch over to the grass, so as to make an easy transition from lawn to tall shrubbery; therefore, choose arching bushes that gro...

Chapter XVIII. English Effects With Hardy Climbers

The fine art of decorating good architecture and transmuting the bad, marrying vines to trees, and throwing a veil or mist over evergreen shrubs like rhododendrons. IAM sometimes tempted to believe...

Climbers For House Walls

Meanwhile a man's first duty is toward his house walls, so let us consider them before we do the porch. And the first big fact is that climbers are so easy to grow and so long-lived that questions of ...

The Best Ways To Train Vines

Only two good ways of training are known to me. If I had a beautiful, well-proportioned house, especially in the Colonial style I should have my architect design once for all a complete and permanent ...

Climbers For Garden Walls

The principles governing climbers for house walls apply also to garden walls, but the garden wall gives us some splendid opportunities in addition. I used to dread the idea of high garden walls, but I...

Climbers For Porch And Arbour

After considering the house and garden walls a man's next duty is to study his porch and pergola, and these introduce a new problem — the column. Here again the first question is not, Which vine do I...

Climbers On Living Trees

Another line of effort in which England is ahead of us, though still groping her way, is the art of growing climbers on living trees. Nature suggested this, for the woodbine sometimes drapes the hawth...

Climbers On Evergreen Trees

The English often allow ivy to grow up Scotch pine and Norway spruce, but this seems altogether too strong a contrast in form and texture. And there is an even greater danger — the danger of destroyin...

Climbers On Evergreen Shrubs

But the climax of delicate beauty in this line of work is to throw a veil over the evergreen shrubs. The one thing that every Englishman yearns to do, and cannot, is to grow the flame flower on holly....

Effects We Cannot Have Our Job

The South and the Pacific coast can rival England in luxuriance and variety, but the North cannot. In New England ivy must be covered in winter or else grown on the ground. East of the Rockies we may ...

Chapter XIX. English Effects With Hardy Perennials

Making pictures with perennial flowers — Bold pictures on lawns — Delicate, misty, airy pictures — Moonlight pictures, wild garden and water side pictures — Pictures containing life. THE most strik...

Perennials For Showy Masses

The showiest border flowers that I saw in England were peonies in June and larkspurs in July. It is right to plan for the showiest features first, but the worst possible way to do it is to get a catal...

Perennials For Architectural Effect

A moment ago I spoke of the pleasant harmonies produced by larkspur when they repeat the vertical lines of porch or pergola. Other flowers with long spikes are foxgloves, monkshoods, chimney bell-flow...

Gray Foliage In Pictures

I believe the English know better than we how to use plants with gray or silvery leaves, such as pinks, the rock-cress, gold-dust, the woolly chickweed, and lavender cotton. So great a variety is ther...

Bold Pictures On Lawns

The English do not spoil their lawns as often as we do by scattering fine specimens over them. But they often feel the need of a formal bed of flowers near the edge of the lawn or near the house. (See...

Delicate, Misty, Airy Pictures

We are inclined to overdo what might be called the masculine element in our gardens. One can vulgarize a garden by having too many plants with large flowers, such as hollyhocks, sunflowers, rose mallo...

Evening And Moonlight Pictures

The finest time for enjoying a garden is at dusk, but our twilight is so much shorter than the English that there is usually nothing left of it after supper. Many Americans can hardly enjoy their gard...

Wild Garden And Water Side Pictures

We have a very provincial idea of wild gardening in America. Most people suppose that it means the cultivation of American wild flowers. If you will examine William Robinson's delightful book on wild ...

Pictures Containing Life

The brooding peace of secluded English gardens is made sweeter by the presence of white doves. The magnificence of others is enhanced by the presence of peacocks. We ought to attract song birds to the...

Chapter XX. English Effects With Alpine Flowers

Rock gardening a universal passion in England and may become so here — Most of the showiest flowers easy to grow even with no rocks. ROCK gardening is a universal passion in England, and no wonder,...

The Taller Alpine Flowers

Let us begin with the flowers that actually grozv in the Alps, not because they are any better than those of our own White Mountains but because they are more famous and easier to get. Doubtless you k...

Dwarf Alpines Any One Can Grow

But the peculiar charm of a rock garden is not in plants that are two feet high or more. It is in the plants that grow only a few inches high, for it is a never-ending delight to see them spread out u...

Alpines That Are Hard To Grow

The way to grow all the difficult alpines is to have a first-class rockery, but I estimate that only 5 or 10 per cent, of the really desirable rock-loving flowers require such treatment. Among these a...

Garden Effects We Can't Have

As nearly as I can judge, the English get their great and glorious mass effects from only six or seven groups of rock plants. I think they depend chiefly on the saxifrages for white and for lacelike e...

Big Effects We Can Have

One way in which we can get immense carpets of flowers in ordinary gardens without rocks, as well as on great estates that have plenty of rocky land, is to concentrate on rock plants that are very eas...

Famous American Rock Plants

Strictly speaking, the moss pink (Phlox subulatd) is about the only American rock plant I know which is commonly cultivated the world over, even in its own country, which is the supreme test. But, her...

American Effects In The Rockery

In the first place, we have at least a hundred wild flowers that we may have to grow on rockeries which are among the world's great treasures. Here again, the flowers are not always native to rocks, y...

Summer Effects Any One Can Have

But to come back to big displays with rock plants that any one can have, I believe that we shall make a great and peculiarly American success by emphasizing summer effects. In England, the rock garden...

Delicate Fern Effects

Oi course, ferns thrive best in shade, and genuine alpine flowers do not. But we must do the best we can. Some of us cannot afford elaborate watering devices and, therefore, the only way to keep rocks...

Flowers For Shady Rocks

I said that we must make a special study of wild flowers that not merely endure shade but actually need shade and which nevertheless have the alpine charm. Our woods furnish many such, but they are mo...

Chapter XXI. English Effects With Long Lived Bulbs

The cheapest way of growing flowers by the million in wood, meadow, and orchard, where they will multiply without care and create visions of supreme beauty. BY FAR the most important lesson England...

Woodland Effects With Bulbs

I must confess that I reached England too late for the daffodils, and my conceptions of their April effects are therefore drawn from their books and magazines which I have tried to follow for the last...

Meadow Effects With Bulbs

English meadows in May are as thickly sown with stars as the heavens at night, for every country gentleman plants many thousand bulbs of the poet's narcissus, a fragrant, six-pointed flower which the ...

Water Side Effects With Bulbs

The most enchanting of all floral pictures are those which are mirrored in the water. The English understand well the value of narcissi on the banks and the necessity of planting the margins everywher...

Shrubbery Effects With Bulbs

It is even possible to adapt the wild 'gardening idea to any yard that is large enough for a border of shrubbery. For instance, grow among your bushes narcissi and all the March blooming bulbs named a...

Formal Beds Of Bulbs

I must confess that formal bedding is one of many subjects beyond my ken. I take little interest in methods which involve forcing and throwing away bulbs or digging them every spring, curing them in s...

Border Effect With Bulbs

Formal beds appeal strongly to the beginner, but he soon finds that an irregular border of hardy perennials gives him a greater variety, a larger season, and more flowers for cutting. The only draw...

Bulb Collectors' Gardens

I hope we shall see the collecting spirit develop wonderfully in America during the next ten years, for there is a heap of fun in it and it will do a lot of good. A man who grows fifty varieties of da...

Tall Clumps On The Lawn

Our common plan of scattering specimen plants all over a lawn is hopelessly bad, and the right thing is to make irregular borders along the sides and at the back of a lot. However, two or three beds o...

Our Chief Need Inspiration

It is easy enough to get information about the species and culture of bulbs, but what we need most is inspiration about pictorial ways of growing them. There are dozens of such pictures in The Garden...

Chapter XXII. Edging And Carpeting Plants

The elegance and perfection of English landscapes and gardens are largely due to these connecting or transitional plants which give the finishing touch to a good design. THE intoxicating beauty of ...

Shrubs For Edging Lawns

Any kind of shrubbery will make a transition between trees and grass, but most of the bushes that we love for their flowers, especially the tall ones, are deficient in foliage at the base. Therefore t...

Edgings For Formal Gardens

If edging plants are important on the lawn they are doubly so in the garden, where we wish every foot of ground to do its best. The most famous edging plant for gardens and formal flower beds is box, ...

Permanent Edgings

If you can satisfy all the conditions, box will preserve the design for many human generations, but if not, the only permanent materials are dead edgings, such as stone, brick, or tile. I saw all so...

Flower Edgings For The Garden

But the most affecting loveliness, in my opinion, is that which comes from the use of flowers for edging garden walks. Take, for instance, the white pinks shown on plate 93. These unpretentious little...

Fragrant Edgings

This brings me to a fascinating subject — the use of fragrant herbs for edging paths in a flower garden. A garden can hardly be charming without sweet odours and I fancy that some of the fascination o...

Chapter XXIII. English Effects With Hardy Bog Plants

The unique charm of orchids, pitcher plants, lilies that grow ten feet high, and other superb flowers which will thrive only in soil that is always moist. 1HOPE I have no reader who imagines for on...

The Effect Of Tropical Luxuriance

For example, you have probably seen and admired a border plant known as the giant knotwood (Polygonum Sieboldii or cuspidatum). In the hardy border it may grow three feet high, but at the water side i...

Gorgeous Flowering Effects

While luxuriant foliage seems to me the first thing to provide for, the man from Missouri will want to know what are the showiest flowers he can have in a bog garden. Here is a short list. Are these...

The Grandest Bog Lilies

The most gorgeous lily we have east of the Rockies is the one that has been well named Lilium superbum. It has flowers about four inches across, orange, spotted with dark purple, and of the Turk's cap...

A Lily Ten Feet High

I saw only one thing to beat Lilium superbum and Canadense in England. The summit of an Englishman's ambition is to grow the giant lily of the Himalayas which has been well named Lilium giganteum. ...

Heaths And Other Peat Loving Shrubs

One of the most enchanting plant families is the one to which the heaths belong — the Ericacea. It is rich in bog plants of many different types of beauty. Some of the showiest are mentioned in Chapte...

Creepers And Ground Covers

Since Sir Henry Yorke's bog garden is naturally composed of peaty soil he could choose nothing more appropriate for covering the ground beneath shrubs than heaths of all kinds. These ericas and dabcec...

Wild Flower Effects

This loyalty to the native wild flowers is an admirable trait in English country gentlemen. In the same spirit country gentlemen in America will some day see to it that their neglected woods are carpe...

Hardy Orchids For Bog Gardens

I was eager to see the European orchids, having had some inkling of their glories from great picture books like Hortus Eystet-tensis. There are thirty-six of them native to Great Britain. I judge th...

The Charm Of Pitcher Plants

Some day I propose to buy a New England farm with a sphagnum bog on it, just for the pleasure of growing hardy orchids and pitcher plants. Not that I care to study their insectivorous habits very deep...

Fragrance In The Bog Garden

The sound of running water and the fragrance of unseen flowers are two of the subtlest charms any garden may have. I cannot stop now to give a list of fragrant flowers, but I saw two plants with fragr...

Grass And Fern Effects

I have before me an English catalogue which offers fifty species of grasses, sedges, rushes, and hardy bamboos, suitable for wet places. A good many of them are variegated with white and yellow and th...

The Precious Hart's Tongue

New to me was the hart's tongue fern (Scolopendrium vulgare), which every English child knows and loves for the breadth and brilliancy of its thick, leathery, undivided leaf. The picture is a fair por...

Effects We Cannot Have

Our summers are too hot and dry for primroses. Near the sea-shore the air is cool and moist enough, but we shall never have primroses by the million in our woodlands, and we have no conception of doze...

Chapter XXIV. England's New Kind Of Flower Bed

It harmonizes with our climate better than our present plan, costs less, is attractive two months longer every year and abolishes annual digging and replanting. IF THERE is any one thing on which w...

The Long Blooming Effect

We now have at least twenty-five perennials and low shrubs that will bloom as long as tender bedding plants — say two months or more, e. g., hydrangeas (plate 103), gaillardias, Miss Lingard phlox, St...

Four Crops In Every Bed

Anybody can have four crops of hardy flowers in every flower bed, and I think most of us ought to be satisfied with that, provided the foliage does not become shabby. For instance, let the main featur...

The Best Centre Pieces

The late or Chinese peonies are the best for centre pieces because they are the longest lived perennials that can be obtained in many colours. They generally bloom in early June in the North. I would ...

Low Shrubs For Bedding

I think we ought to use low shrubs for bedding, as the English often do. For (1) they are more permanent than perennials; (2) they are a pleasant change from the flatness of ordinary bedding; (3) some...

The Best Fillers

For filling in between the most important plants we must have something that grows higher than the centre piece without taking much room. Therefore, bulbs are best, as a rule. I would reject hyacinths...

The Best Carpeting Plants

Carpeting plants should do three things: (i) hide every inch of soil; (2) furnish attractive foliage for seven months; (3) bear some interesting flowers. It is possible to carpet the whole of a bed, b...

The Fourth Crop

Underneath the carpeting plant it is perfectly practical to have a crop of bulbs. Indeed, bulbs never look their best when growing out of bare earth. They are far prettier when seen against a backgrou...

Gaining Two Or Three Months

Any one can make a hardy bed look attractive two or three months longer than the best bed of tender plants in the world. There are two whole months in spring, or from March 15th to May 15th, when hard...

Points To Remember

In conclusion, it seems to me that there are only two positions of the first importance where formal beds are really needed, viz., near the house and in the garden. For the first position the noblest ...

Chapter XXV. The Right And Wrong Kind Of Tropical Effects

What England can teach us about hardy 11 foliage plants—They cost less than tender ones and harmonize with Northern surroundings—Beautiful leaf forms preferable to gaudy colours. ENGLAND has the r...

An Infallible Rule

So, then, we have a sure principle to guide us in bringing the spirit of tropical beauty to the North. We are not to pick out the showiest plants of the tropics and transport them bodily, for they fea...

What We Mean By "Tropical"

Nine times out of ten when we speak of tropical vegetation the chief idea in our mind is luxuriance of foliage, rather than any particular leaf form. I realized this during my first day in England, ...

The Large Leaf Effect

Undoubtedly one important element is the gigantic individual leaf. The conventional way of getting this effect is to set out banana plants, which are generally torn to shreds by a storm. The most w...

Masculine Effects

All large leaves tend to have a masculine effect in the landscape and there is one leaf form that is peculiarly virile. Here again the botanist helps us with his word palmate, which refers to the ou...

Bamboo Effects

But we make a great mistake if we suppose that palms are all fan-shaped. Many, if not most, belong to the feathery, or pinnate, type of beauty. The Northern florist sells more plants of the feathery K...

Other "Feminine" Effects

Bamboos and other plants of feathery character are generally considered to have a feminine type of beauty. But beauty is, of course, wholly subjective and therefore it would be absurd to follow such c...

Highly Coloured Foliage Effects

There are some enthusiasts about hardy plants who make a fetich of the idea of hardiness. They see nothing objectionable in a lawn peppered with copper beech, purple plum, golden elder, and variegated...

Chapter XXVI. Lessons From English Cottage Gardens

We cannot reproduce the charm of Old English examples — Our labourers' homes a national disgrace— The only way American cottages and their gardens may become altogether lovely. I CAN think of nothi...

Half The Charm Explained

In my opinion about one half of this universal rhapsody is due simply to the fact that every cottage has a garden. The American is used to seeing ugliness everywhere — wooden buildings, no national st...

Four Tenths More Explained

The second great reason why we cannot copy English cottage gardens is that about four tenths of their charm is due to the cottages themselves and these do not fit our present mode of life at all. I wi...

The Material Too Different

The easiest way to prove that we cannot copy English cottage gardens is to show that the material is too different. Let us go back to Tennyson's description and run over his list of plants. By travel...

The Style Of Gardening Different

Quite as important as the material in these cottage gardens is the difficult question of a national style in gardening. I was motoring through the Southern counties of England as the guest of one o...

Our National Style

The American style of cottage gardening must grow out of the fact that our labourers do not have as much time for gardening as the English. We have about two hours less sunlight every day than the Eng...

Our Cottage Garden Material

From the nature of things the cottager can grow few trees or none. He hasn't enough space for tall trees, and they would rob his lawn and trees. He can hardly afford evergreens or magnolias. When all ...

Appendix. How To See English Gardens

ENGLAND is one great garden. We often hear this phrase, but the glory of its meaning does not burst upon an American until he has set foot upon English soil. It means that every home has its garden; ...