L. H. Bailey

“ The bushes and trees are scattered promiscuously over the area. Such a yard has no purpose, no central idea. It shows plainly that the planter had no constructive conception, no grasp of any design, and no appreciation of the fundamental elements of the beauty of landscape. Its only merit is the fact that trees and shrubs have been planted; and this, to most minds, comprises the essence and sum of the ornamentation of grounds. Every tree and bush is an individual alone, unattended, disconnected from its environments, and, therefore, meaningless. Such a yard is only a nursery. ”

“ Every family, therefore, may have a garden. If there is not a foot of land, there are porches or windows. Wherever there is sunlight, plants may be made to grow; and one plant in a tin-can may be a more helpful and inspiring garden to some mind than a whole acre of lawn and flowers may be to another.
The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily, on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little. ”

“ Yet wholly aside from the value of a tool as an implement of tillage and as a weapon for the pursuit of weeds, is its merit merely as a shapely and interesting instrument. A man will take infinite pains to choose a gun or a fishing-rod to his liking, and a woman gives her best attention to the selecting of an umbrella; but a hoe is only a hoe and a rake only a rake. If one puts his personal choice into the securing of plants for a garden, so should he discriminate in the choice of hand tools, to secure those that are light, trim, well made, and precisely adapted to the work to be accomplished. ”

“ The man who worries morning and night about the dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions. Each blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it shines in the exuberant sunlight of the growing spring, and attracts the insects to its bosom. ”

“ It is at least possible to introduce a variety of trees into a city or village, by devoting one street or a series of blocks to a single kind of tree,—one street being known by its lindens, one by its plane-trees, one by its oaks, one by its hickories, one by its native birches, beech, coffee-tree, sassafras, gum or liquidambar, tulip tree, and the like. There is every reason why a city, particularly a small city or a village, should become to some extent an artistic expression of its natural region.
The home-maker is fortunate if his area already possesses well-grown large trees. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The opportunity for artistic composition and design is nowhere so great as in the landscape garden, because no other art has such a limitless field for the expression of its emotions. It is not strange, if this be true, that there have been few great landscape gardeners, and that, falling short of art, the landscape gardener too often works in the sphere of the artisan. There can be no rules for landscape gardening, any more than there can be for painting or sculpture. ”

“ We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but we are happier when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty pigweeds, growing and crowding in luxuriant abandon, may be a better and more worthy object of affection than a bed of coleuses in which every spark of life and spirit and individuality has been sheared out and suppressed. ”

“ The pruner should know the flower-bearing habit of the plant that he prunes,—whether the bloom is on the shoots of last season or on the new wood of the present season, and whether the flower-buds of spring-blooming plants are separate from the leaf-buds. ”

“ The lawn provided, the gardener conceives what is the dominant and central feature in the place, and then throws the entire premises into subordination to this feature. In home grounds this central feature is the house. To scatter trees and bushes over the area defeats the fundamental purpose of the place,—the purpose to make every part of the grounds lead up to the home and to accentuate its homelikeness.
A house must have a background if it is to become a home. A house that stands on a bare plain or hill is a part of the universe, not a part of a home. ”

“ I want him to know the real joy that there is in the simple processes of breaking the earth and fitting it for the seed. The more pains he takes with these processes, naturally the keener will be his enjoyment of them. No one can have any other satisfaction than that of mere manual exercise if he does not know the reasons for what he does with his soil. ”

“ Very soon one finds himself deeply interested in these random and detached pictures, and almost before he is aware he finds that he has rounded off the corners of the house, made snug little arbors of wild grapes and clematis, covered the rear fence and the outhouse with actinidia and bitter-sweet, and has thrown in dashes of color with hollyhocks, cannas, and lilies, and has tied the foundations of the buildings to the greensward by low strands of vines or deft bits of planting. ”

“ In the South and in arid countries, greensward is not the prevailing feature of the landscape, and in these regions the landscape design may take on a wholly different character, if the work is to be nature-like. We have not yet developed other conceptions of landscape work to any perfect extent, and we inject the English greensward treatment even into deserts. We may look for the time when a brown landscape garden may be made in a brown country, and it may be good art not to attempt a broad open center in regions in which undergrowth rather than sod is the natural ground cover. ”

“ This is more than my gardener accomplished on an equal area, with manure and water and a man to help. The difference was that the plants on the dump wanted to grow, and the imported plants in the garden did not want to grow. It was the difference between a willing horse and a balky horse. If a person wants to show his skill, he may choose the balky plant; but if he wants fun and comfort in gardening, he would better choose the willing one. ”

“ Lands that, on the one hand, are very hard and solid, with a tendency to bake, and, on the other, that are loose and leachy, are very greatly benefited by the addition of organic matter. When this organic matter—as animal and plant remains—decays and becomes thoroughly incorporated with the soil, it forms what is called humus. The addition of this humus makes the land mellow, friable, retentive of moisture, and promotes the general chemical activities of the soil. It also puts the soil in the best physical condition for the comfort and well-being of the plants. ”

“ He may still like the weeping and cut-leaved and party-colored trees of the horticulturist, but he sees that their best effects are to be had when they are planted sparingly, as borders or promontories of the structural masses.
The best planting, as the best painting and the best music, is possible only with the best and tenderest feeling and the closest living with nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Little children like the dandelions: why may not we? Love the things nearest at hand; and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the gate of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market, “How much there is in the world that I do not want!” ”

“ A common type of walk is a, and it is a nuisance. The time that one loses in going around the cameo-set in the center would be sufficient, if conserved, to lengthen a man’s life by several months or a year. Such a device has no merit in art or convenience. Walk b is better, but still is not ideal, inasmuch as it makes too much of a right-angled curve, and the pedestrian desires to cut across the corner. Such a walk, also, usually extends too far beyond the corner of the house to make it appear to be direct. It has the merit, however, of leaving the center of the lawn practically untouched. ”

“ The culture of the bean, while of the easiest, often proves a failure as far as the first crop is concerned, from planting the seed before the ground has become warm and dry. No vegetable seed will decay quicker than beans, and the delay caused by waiting for the soil to become warm and free from excessive moisture will be more than made up by the rapidity of growth when finally they are planted. Beans will grow on most any land, but the best results may be secured by having the soil well enriched and in good physical condition. ”

“ Tarryer writes, “the ten or fifteen minutes one has to enjoy in the flower, fruit, and vegetable garden—and that would suffice for the needful weeding with the hoes we are celebrating—would be lost in harnessing horses or adjusting and oiling squeaky wheel-hoes, even if everybody had them. The ‘American Garden’ is not big enough, nor my patience long enough, to give more than an inkling of the unspeakable merits of these weapons of society and civilization. ”

“ The labor of protecting large plants is often great and the results uncertain, and in most cases it is a question whether more satisfaction could not be attained by growing only hardy trees and shrubs.
The objection to covering tender woody plants cannot be urged with equal force against tender herbs or very low bushes, for these are protected with ease. Even the ordinary mulch may afford sufficient protection; and if the tops kill back, the plant quickly renews itself from near the base, and in many plants—as in most hybrid perpetual roses—the best bloom is on these new growths of the season. ”