Herbaceous border

“ The Saxon earthwork below the grass walk is given over to what is technically termed “the herbaceous border,” and over one thousand eight hundred square feet there should be such a succession of flowers growing just as they please, as should delight the heart of a democracy. ”

“ The border should be planted so thick as to allow the plants to run together, thereby giving one continuous effect. Most shrubs should be set 3 feet apart. Things as large as lilacs may go 4 feet and sometimes even more. Common herbaceous perennials, as bleeding heart, delphiniums, hollyhocks, and the like, should go from 12 to 18 inches. On the front edge of the border is a very excellent place for annual and tender flowering plants. Here, for example, one may make a fringe of asters, geraniums, coleus, or anything else he may choose. ”

“ The border is necessarily curved, from the evenness of the impression of the river on a soft soil; and the edge is fringed with shrubs. A great part of them are formed into meadows, which are more profitable, and, at the same time, more agreeable to the eye than any other mode of culture. The magnificent elms, for which this country is remarkable, stand singly in the fields; while orchards and groves serve to break the uniformity. ”

“ Here we have a border scene which is typical in nature—the belt of unbroken forest, growing thinner and more stunted toward its upper edge, succeeded by a zone of scattered trees, which may form a cluster perhaps in some sheltered gulch where soil has collected and north winds are excluded, and higher still the whitened skeleton of a tree to show how far the forest once invaded the domain of the waste. ”

“ The vast, irregular belt of forest encircling the central treeless portion of the continent also dies out on its northern border, where the subarctic forest is succeeded northward by the Barren Grounds and tundra plains. Clearly the explanation of the absence of trees in the prairie region and the adjacent plateaus cannot be applied to scarcely less extensive treeless plains at the far north, where rain falls in summer and the soil is always abundantly charged with moisture. ”

“ The irregular border of the forest reaches in some places to within four or five hundred yards of the road, forming a barrier to the searching of a field-glass at 1000 yards from our position. Away to the right the valley opens out like a map, with villages dotted here and there among green plantations in the middle distance, and beyond a great rolling stretch of country looking to the naked eye like some large barren heath, but showing in the field-glass the patch-quilt effect of innumerable tiny strips of variegated cultivation. ”

“ In filling a border along a rather short path, the plants should always be set in clumps of from six to twelve of a kind. If the border is narrow and has no shrubs or hedge back of it, the effect will be better if the plants do not exceed three feet in height. Omit from such a border Hollyhocks, Rudbeckias, Sunflowers and Cosmos. Sweet Williams, Columbines, Sweet Alyssum, Candytuft, Nasturtiums and Phlox Drummondii can all be grown as edging for borders. ”

“ The differences in the general character of our natural vegetation from coast to coast and border to border are apparent despite three centuries of man’s disturbance in the East and one century in the West. ”

“ The border is an excellent place in which to colonize native or other interesting plants. A person comes across an attractive plant on his tramp and wishes it were in his garden. Whatever the time of year, he may break off the top close to the ground, take up the roots and plant them in the border. If a little attention is given to the plant for the first two or three weeks, as watering or mulching or shading, it should become established and give satisfactory bloom the following year. ”

“ For border plants to be at their best must receive special consideration as to their many and different wants. We have to remember that they are gathered together in our gardens from all the temperate regions of the world, and from every kind of soil and situation. ”

“ The prairies are frequently covered for miles with post oaks, that is to say, oaks growing so close together, that their foliage is interlaced, and hardly allows the sun a peep at the ground, covered with fine short grass. Large and small clumps of trees of this sort are scattered over these grassy plateaux, and give the country an appearance as if human hands had been active here years agone, and these are the remaining and border lines of former grounds and gardens. ”

“ The change as one travels northward from the grassy prairies to the country of equally mild relief, but clothed with trees adapted to a rigorous climate, is gradual. Along the irregular and in part indefinite junction of these two vast plains, the alignment of the forest is broken in many places, and its margin fringed by a picket-line of groves and of isolated trees, which has advanced southward and invaded the grass-lands. ”

“ The soil of this swampy border is covered with trees and shrubs, where the tiger, the elephant, and other animals find secure retreat. Beyond this border, you will reach smiling valleys and noble forests. 4. As you advance onward and upward, you will get among bolder and more rugged scenes. The sides of the mountains are very steep, sometimes well wooded to quite a height, but sometimes quite barren. ”

“ Valleys and cultivated fields, have each their characteristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary the ground on which we tread; the solemn depth of the lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild marigolds, have all, and each, their own peculiar attractions. ”

“ In the central zone, lying parallel to the former, the plain and the forest long contend with each other for the possession of the soil; the trees prevail for some distance, but gradually dwindle into stunted and thorny bushes, only reappearing in belts of forest along the banks of the streams, until finally in the south, the victory remains with the plain, which displays its smooth, velvet-like surface unbounded and unbroken. ”

“ Flora and Fauna.—The soil of the peninsula is remarkably fertile both in the plains and on the mountain slopes. In the vast forests the decay of vegetable matter during countless ages has enriched the soil to the depth of many feet, and from it springs the most marvellous tangle of huge trees, shrubs, bushes, underwood, creepers, climbing plants and trailing vines, the whole hung with ferns, mosses, and parasitic growths, and bound together by rattans and huge rope-like trailers. ”

“ Cover the border when the trees are planted outside, with a good coat of fern or any other such material before they become saturated and chilled by the autumnal rains, to be laid on thickly in layers, beginning at the front of the border, the whole to be covered with a thin layer of good straw, and fastened down as a thatcher does the straw on stacks. ”

“ Even these can be improved by a broad edging of grass to every bed. Herbaceous borders are delightful; we cannot live without them, but we do want beds too, they are so brilliant, so useful, and so well-behaved. “Bedders” are the good children of the garden, herbaceous plants the wayward. To manage them is like playing a game of croquet with Wonderland Alice’s [Pg 79] live flamingoes for hoops and mallets; the plants have the same habit of taking their way, not ours, and this puts us more than ever in conceit with our little plots of green enamel, set with coloured flowers like jewels. ”

“ The great western plains have a rich black soil, but are generally treeless, though covered with grass and shrubs. The valleys along the coast are filled with thick deposits of alluvial soil of great fertility, and here we find a luxuriant tropical forest growth. Though the predominating species are Australian types. ”

“ A lofty range of mountains, which is so ancient as to date from a period when the species of animals and plants differed from those now living, will naturally form a barrier between contiguous provinces; but a chain which has been raised, in great part, within the epoch of existing species, and around which new lands have arisen from the sea within that period, will be a centre of peculiar vegetation. ”

“ Upon these rivers are extensive and valuable tracts of bottom land covered with deep and heavy forests, and possessed of a soil adapted to the cultivation of all the variety of vegetable products common to the various climates in which they are situated. The highlands, back of the bottoms, although variegated with hills and vallies alternating with each other in quick succession, are generally possessed of a surface susceptible of being tilled, and in many instances of a soil equally rich and prolific with that of the bottoms. ”

“ The prairies were decorated with a growth of flowers that seemed as gorgeous and grand as the brilliancy of stars in the heavens, and exceed description. The soil is rich and fertile, from three to ten feet deep, and generally composed of a rich black mould, intermingled with clay and sand. ”

“ But the story told by the majestic continuous forests of the south creates a very different impression. No tree in the forest is more enduringly established in concordance with both climate and soil. It grows heartily everywhere—on moraines, rocky ledges, along watercourses, and in the deep, moist alluvium of meadows with, as we have seen, a multitude of seedlings and saplings crowding up around the aged, abundantly able to maintain the forest in prime vigor. ”

“ Much of the country we have denominated hilly is rich, fertile land, even to the summits of the hills. On all the streams are strips of rich alluvion [Pg 226] of exhaustless fertility. The interior, on the two White rivers and tributaries, is moderately undulating, tolerably rich soil, and much of it heavily timbered with oaks of various species, poplar, beech, sugar tree, walnuts, hickory, elm, and other varieties common to the West. There is much level, table land, between the streams. ”

“ The numerous mountain ranges, which traverse that region in all directions, covered with majestic forests, present ever-changing spectacles of beauty. Blooming valleys stretch between them abundantly watered by clear and sparkling brooks. Groves of beautiful fruit-trees cover them in some places, and in others olive-trees delight the eye with their dark green foliage. Unusually large and brilliant poppies grow there and the cotton and corn fields yield abundant harvests. ”

“ So did this active modern life have even then a foothold and lurking place in the midst of the stateliness and contemplativeness of those eastern plains. In another era the "lily-of-the valley, cowslip, dandelion," were to work their way down into the plain, and bloom in a level zone of their own reaching round the earth. Already has the era of the temperate zone arrived, the era of the pine and the oak, for the palm and the banian do not supply the wants of this age. The lichens on the summits of the rocks will perchance find their level ere long. ”

“ I admit, though not without reluctance, that the forest-trees of Central and Southern Europe have a great advantage over our own in the corresponding latitudes, in density of foliage as well as in depth of color and persistence of the leaves in deciduous species. ”

“ The species of trees are distributed in well-defined zones, because of which they may to a large degree be segregated, or at least the specific composition of the forest, if a mixed one, may be determined. ”

“ In the Transition zone, the outlying boreal and austral elements overlap; the forests and the fauna are mixed, and northern and southern trees and animals grow and live side by side. In this zone we enter the true agricultural part of our country, and the hardier crop plants attain their highest perfection. In the Carolinian zone trees adapted to a warmer climate, like the sassafras and tulip tree, first make their appearance, and the semi-hardy fruits, the sweet potato, tobacco, and the hardier grapes reach their best conditions. ”

“ It forms a zone of the brightest green all around the mountain, which exhibits a pleasing contrast to its white and hoary summits. It is called the woody region, because it abounds with oaks, beeches, and firs. The soil is similar to that of the lower region; the air is cool and refreshing, and every breeze is loaded with a thousand perfumes, the whole ground being covered over with the richest aromatic plants. Many parts of this space are the most heavenly spots upon earth ”

“ For this reason, Ground newly cleared, whose Soil is black and sandy, which is kept moist by a River, and its Borders so high as to shelter it from the Winds, especially towards the Sea Coast, is preferable to any other ”

“ Nothing can be more different than the features of the country on the exterior and interior of this great barrier, particularly on the eastern coast, where, between the mountains and the sea, the vegetation partakes to a great extent of a tropical character; it is there, on the rich alluvial soil, formed by the debris washed down from the hills, that we find various species of Eucalypti, Fici,and other trees, many of which attain an immense altitude, and forests of towering palms ”