Gardening

“ Rose gardens, sunk gardens, water gardens lead on to copses where all wild things of beauty are met together to entrance the eye. Broad walks between herbaceous borders, containing every flower loved from the time of Eve; sheltered patches where seedlings thrive, a nursery of carefully-reared young. And in this heaven of gardening land gardeners galore flit to and fro, ever doing their master's behest, and manure and water, and time and money may be considerations but are not anxieties. ”

“ Shall I compute in figures what daily freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his trial-balance. ”

“ Many people begin their gardening by thinking that the making and maintaining of a handsome and well-filled flower-border is quite an easy matter. In fact, it is one of the most difficult problems in the whole range of horticultural practice—wild gardening perhaps excepted. To achieve anything beyond the ordinary commonplace mixture, that is without plan or forethought, and that glares with the usual faults of bad colour-combinations and yawning, empty gaps, needs years of observation and a considerable knowledge of plants and their ways as individuals. ”

“ Indeed, gardening had here reached a perfection that I had never before dreamed of. I cannot undertake to describe the effect of so much taste and skill as had evidently been employed; I will only tell you, that we passed by winding paths over acres and acres, with a constant varying surface, where on all sides were growing every variety of shrubs and flowers, with more than natural grace, all set in borders of greenest, closest turf, and all kept with most consummate neatness. ”

“ Because a garden should not, any more than my lady's face, have all its features—nose, eyes, ears, lips—of one size? No, that is true of all gardening alike; but because with flowering [Pg 85] shrubbery our gardening can be more lenient than with annuals alone, or with only herbaceous plants and evergreens.
"However enraptured of wild nature you may be, you do and must require of her some subserviency about your own dwelling." ”

“ Gardening is a wholesome avocation that encourages appreciation for nature and concern for the preservation and enhancement of our environment. It prompts a genuine respect for those who work in agriculture today. Gardening, above all, provides a special source of fulfillment when foresight, patience, and collaboration with soil and sunlight finally are repaid by lovely flowers and luscious harvests. ”

“ All that he knows about gardening must be influenced, [24] and sometimes considerably altered, by his own local conditions of soil, aspect, and climate. You must remember this when you buy your seeds in the spring and your bulbs in the autumn, and choose those that do well in your neighbourhood. You should always observe what plants other people near you are growing in their gardens, and what conditions they give them. ”

“ As your mother is working in the kitchen during the hot summer or sewing during a long dull winter afternoon, would it not be a joy to her to look out at a syringa sweet with blossom or a barberry with nodding red berries? Landscape gardening is not only for the purpose of adding beauty to the earth's surface, but also for the putting joy into the heart of a person as well.
"I forgot to say that in tree and shrub selection it is usually better to choose those of the locality one lives in. Unusual and foreign plants do less well, and often harmonize but poorly with their new setting. ”

“ Well, after discussing the various pros and cons of the subject we at length determined upon gardening. But gardening is a very hackneyed subject, and besides, it has too wide a scope. Let us decide to cultivate one family or genus of plants. But which shall it be? Let us think. We do not want to grow vegetables; we want flowers. Shall we say roses? No, we have numbers of roses already, and besides, our country garden is in the most sandy part of Surrey, the very worst soil for many kinds of roses. Well, shall we try lilies? Ah, why not? No one, we know, gives special attention to lilies. ”

“ The old landscape-gardening dogma, which tells us we cannot have all the wild beauty of nature in our gardens, and may as well resign ourselves to the compass, and the level, and the defined daub of colour and pudding-like heaps of shrubs, had some faint force when our materials for gardening were few, [A] but considering our present rich and, to a great extent, unused stores from every clime, and from almost every important section of the vegetable kingdom, it is demonstrably false and foolish. ”

“ In the third place I bought a book about gardening for amateurs and it frightened me. It began just about the point where I shall leave off if I live to be a hundred years old.
And then, neglected though it was, the garden made its appeal to me. All round it are tall trees—elm, and chestnut, and wild cherry, and plane, and sycamore. ”

“ But the planting and thus providing this much-needed shelter is just good gardening, and when, in addition, it is done to a design of happy invention and true proportion, with just such refinements of detail and ornament as are suited to the garden’s calibre and the owner’s endowment, then, with the addition of splendid masses of good flowers grandly grown, do we find gardening at its best. ”

“ An interesting point in favour of the wild garden is the succession of effects which it may afford, and which are suggested by the illustrations on the next pages, both showing a succession of life on the same spot of ground. In gardens in early summer at present the whole of the portion devoted to flower–gardening is dug up raw as a ploughed field, just when the earth is naturally most thickly strewn with flowers. ”

“ Flower-gardening, or the cultivation of plants valued for their bloom in making ornamental beds and borders and furnishing flowers for the decoration of the home, is generally called floriculture. Landscape-gardening is the art of so arranging flower-beds, grass, shrubbery, and trees as to produce pleasing effects in the grounds surrounding our homes and in great public parks and pleasure grounds. ”

“ But the scope of practical gardening covers a range of horticultural practice wide enough to give play to every variety of human taste. Some find their greatest pleasure in collecting as large a number as possible of [003] all sorts of plants from all sources, others in collecting them themselves in their foreign homes, others in making rock-gardens, or ferneries, or peat-gardens, or bog-gardens, or gardens for conifers or for flowering shrubs, or special gardens of plants and trees with variegated or coloured leaves, or in the cultivation of some particular race or family of plants. ”

“ On supposition of a yard and garden, with young boys and domestic animals under her care, she would need the first principles of landscape gardening, floriculture, horticulture, fruit culture, and agriculture ”

“ When I look back over thirty years of gardening, I see what an extraordinary progress there has been, not only in the introduction of good plants new to general cultivation, but also in the home production of improved kinds of old favourites. ”

“ Meadow Rue, Thalictrum.—Tall and vigorous herbaceous plants, mostly without any beauty of flower when closely examined, but often affording a pleasing distant effect when seen in masses, and hence desirable for this mode of gardening, though seldom suitable for a position in the garden proper. They grow in any soil, and should be placed among rank herbs and coarse vegetation, not in the foreground, which might be occupied by more brilliant subjects. ”

“ Give me a sunny garden patch in the golden springtime, when the trees are picking out their new gowns, in all the various self-colored delicate grays and greens—strange how beautiful they are, in the same old unchanging styles, isn't it?—give me seeds to watch as they find the light, plants to tend as they take hold in the fine, loose, rich soil, and you may have the other sports. ”

“ Others may best like wide lawns with large trees, or wild gardening, or a quite formal garden, with trim hedge and walk, and terrace, and brilliant parterre, or a combination of several ways of gardening. And all are right and reasonable and enjoyable to their owners, and in some way or degree helpful to others. ”

“ If you have room for but one sort in your home garden, plant this for early, and a month later for main crop.
Do not fail to try some of this year's novelties. Half the fun of gardening is in the experimenting. But when you are testing out the new things in comparison with the old, just take a few plants of the latter and give them the same extra care and attention. Very often the reputation of a novelty is built upon the fact that in growing it on trial the gardener has given it unusual care and the best soil and location at his command. ”

“ It will be play, and play of such a healthy character that you can well afford to ignore soiled [73] clothes, and hands that have caught the grime of the soil, and faces on which sweat and soil have met on common ground and formed an intimate partnership. The healthy color of the faces of the children who work out of doors, and the excellent appetites that they bring to the table, will convince you that gardening is the best of all tonics for them. ”

“ Floriculture, landscape-gardening, tree-planting and fruit-culture appeal to the sense of beauty. The whole yard and garden together need to be planted and laid out on principles of taste and attractiveness. ”

“ It behooves the judicious gardener, then, not to be too slavish in his attempts to imitate natural conditions, and to bear in mind that such attempts sometimes end in failure. The most successful gardening is that which turns to the best account the plastic organization of the plant, and enables it to develop and multiply as perfectly as possible. ”

“ Here, each girl has the management of a plot of ground, and elementary landscape gardening from simple designs is shown. Besides being taught the use to which land can be put for the cultivation of vegetables, fruit and flowers, students can learn preserving and cooking fruits and vegetables. ”

“ The bags are not opened until they are by the hole in which the trees are to be placed, which, by the way, is always made and used after the directions you gave us for rose planting; and I'm coming to agree with you that the success in gardening lies more than half in the putting under ground, and that the proper spreading and securing of roots in earth thoroughly loosened to allow new roots to feel and find their way is one of the secrets of what is usually termed "luck"! ”

“ For the love of gardening is a seed that once sown never dies, but always grows and grows to an enduring and ever-increasing source of happiness. ”

“ Cuttings of either of these strike readily, and stocks fit for grafting are easily procured. In sheltered and warm positions, the greenhouse species are admirably suited for sub-tropical gardening, either planted singly or in groups. ”

“ The old herbaceous plants that have been growing and spreading for years attain to any age and size, which does not improve their shapes or blossoms. The country garden is lovely sometimes of its own sweet wayward will, but its owner might frequently do worse than take a lesson in up-to-date gardening from the proprietor of the small suburban patch. ”

“ Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. ”

“ The general characters of the commoner families of plants in cultivation. The origin of species.
Horticultural operations and practice.—Elements of [158] surveying and landscape gardening. Choice of site for garden. Description and use of implements under each head. Operations connected with the cultivation of the land, with explanations and illustrations of good and bad methods; digging and trenching; draining, hoeing, stirring the soil, and weeding; watering; preparation of seed beds; rolling and raking, sowing, transplanting and thinning; potting, planting ”

“ Students are encouraged to take personal interest in all alterations and improvements made in the gardens.
Attention is given to the every-day work of a garden, comprising:—The care of grass, paths and beds; mowing, sweeping and general tidiness; digging, trenching and other ground operations, raising plants from seeds and cuttings, their subsequent treatment; culture of herbaceous alpine plants and roses; forcing violets, Dutch bulbs, richardias, etc.; watering, ventilation and other points of glass-house management. ”

“ But if one has no area which he can make into a lawn and upon which he can plant such verdurous masses, what then may he do? Even then there may be opportunity for a little neat and artistic planting. Even if one lives in a rented house, he may bring in a bush or an herb from the woods, and paint a picture with it. ”

“ The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his [Pg 102] own estate. He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature who was not half Ben's size and yet had had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once. ”

“ If you have more than you can keep tidy, the grown-ups will be sorry they let you have a [3] garden at all, and some day they will say that the gardener wants your bit of sunny border for his winter lettuces, and that you had better take yourself and your weeds and your mess away to that no-man’s-land in the shrubbery, where nothing much will grow, and where it is always sad and chilly. So we will imagine that your garden is twelve feet long and seven feet wide, and that the sun shines on it whenever it is fine. ”