Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by L. H. Bailey

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[Illustration: 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 masses 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 masses.

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 grass;
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.

[Illustration: 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 sparse 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 22. Petunias against a background of osiers.]

[Illustration: 23. A sowing of flowers along a marginal planting.]

[Illustration: 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.]

[Illustration: 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 mass of its kind and color, and the effect was fine. In the
middle was a plantation of hundreds of clumps of Japan 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
passed. 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 grasses and
aster-stems hold their banners above the snow and are a source of
delight to every frolicsome bevy of snowbirds.

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

[Illustration: 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
Japanese _Rosa rugosa,_ however, have distinct merit for mass 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 unobscured. 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.

[Illustration: 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.

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

[Illustration: 29. A large-leaved nicotiana.]

[Illustration: 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 sparse 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 masses 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.

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

[Illustration: 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 illustration 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!

[Illustration: 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 illustrated
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 illustrated in the common planting of willows and poplars
about summer places or lake shores. 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 assumes 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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 illustrate what I desire to teach.

A front yard example.

[Illustration: 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 prickly 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 mass. 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.

[Illustration: 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 passage. 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 mass 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.

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