Amateur Gardencraft: A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover

by Eben E. Rexford

In most neighborhoods one can secure enough material to stock the border from friends who have old plants that need to be divided, or by exchanging varieties.

But if you want plants of any particular color, or of a certain variety, you will do well to give your order to a dealer. In most gardens five or six years old the original varieties will either have died out or so deteriorated that the stock you obtain there will be inferior in many respects, therefore not at all satisfactory to one who is inclined to be satisfied with nothing but the best. The "best" is what the dealer will send you if you patronize one who has established a reputation for honesty.

The impression prevails, to a great extent, that perennials bloom only for a very short time in the early part of the season. This is a mistake. If you select your plants with a view to the prolongation of the flowering period, you can have flowers throughout the season from this class of plants. Of course not all of them will bloom at the same time. I would not be understood as meaning that. But what I do mean is—that by choosing for a succession of bloom it is possible to secure kinds whose flowering periods will meet and overlap each other in such a manner that some of them will be in bloom most of the time. Many kinds bloom long before the earliest annuals are ready to begin the work of the season. Others are in their prime at midsummer, and later ones will give flowers until frost comes. If you read up the catalogues and familiarize yourself with the habits of the plants which the dealer offers for sale, you can make a selection that will keep the garden gay from May to November.

On the ordinary home-lot there is not much choice allowed as to the location of the border. It must go to the sides of the lot if it starts in front of the house, or it may be located at the rear of the dwelling. On most grounds it will, after a little, occupy both of these positions, for it will outgrow its early limitations in a few years. You will be constantly adding to it, and thus it comes about that the border that begins on each side of the lot will overflow to the rear.

I would never advise locating it in front of the dwelling. Leave the lawn unbroken there. While there is not much opportunity for "effect" on small grounds, a departure from straight lines can always be made, and formality and primness be avoided to a considerable degree. Let the inner edge of the border curve, as shown in the illustration accompanying this chapter, and the result will be a hundredfold more pleasing than it would be if it were a straight line. Curves are always graceful, and indentations here and there enable you to secure new points of view that add vastly to the general effect. They make the border seem larger than it really is because only a portion of it is seen at the same time, as would not be the case if it were made up of straight rows of plants, with the same width throughout.

By planting low-growing kinds in front, and backing them up with kinds of a taller growth, with the very tallest growers in the rear, the effect of a bank of flowers and foliage can be secured. This the illustration clearly shows.

Shrubbery can be used in connection with perennials with most satisfactory results. This, as the reader will see, was done on the grounds from which the picture was taken. Here we have a combination which cannot fail to afford pleasure. I would not advise any home-maker to confine his border to plants of one class. Use shrubs and perennials together, and scatter annuals here and there, and have bulbs all along the border's edge.

I want to call particular attention to one thing which the picture under consideration emphasizes very forcibly, and that is—the unstudied informality of it. It seems to have planned itself. It is like one of Nature's fence-corner bits of gardening.

For use in the background we have several most excellent plants. The Delphinium—Larkspur—grows to a height of seven or eight feet, in rich soil, sending up a score or more of stout stalks from each strong clump of roots. Two or three feet of the upper part of these stalks will be solid with a mass of flowers of the richest, most intense blue imaginable. I know of no other flower of so deep and striking a shade of this rather rare color in the garden. In order to guard against injury from strong winds, stout stakes should be set about each clump, and wound with wire or substantial cord to prevent the flowering stalks from being broken down. There is a white variety, Chinensis, that is most effective when used in combination with the blue, which you will find catalogued as Delphinium formosum. If several strong clumps are grouped together, the effect will be magnificent when the plants are in full bloom. By cutting away the old stalks as soon as they have developed all their flowers, new ones can be coaxed to grow, and under this treatment the plants can be kept in bloom for many weeks.

"Golden Glow" Rudbeckia is quite as strong a grower as the Delphinium, and a more prolific bloomer does not exist. It will literally cover itself with flowers of the richest golden yellow, resembling in shape and size those of the "decorative" type of Dahlia. This plant is a very strong grower, and so aggressive that it will dispute possession with any plant near it, and on this account it should never be given a place where it can interfere with choice varieties. Let it have its own way and it will crowd out even the grass of the lawn. Its proper place is in the extreme background, well to the rear, where distance will lend enchantment to the view. It must not be inferred from this that it is too coarse a flower to give a front place to. It belongs to the rear simply because of its aggressive qualities, and the intense effect of its strong, all-pervading color. You do not want a flower in the front row that, being given an inch, will straightway insist upon taking an ell. This the Rudbeckia will do, every time, if not promptly checked. It is an exceedingly valuable plant to cut from, as its flowers last for days, and light up a room like a great burst of strong sunshine.