Don't throw away any plants that are worth growing. If you have no use for them some of your neighbors will doubtless be glad to get them. Give them to the poor children of your neighborhood, and tell them how to care for them, and you will not only be doing a kind deed but you will be putting into the life that needs uplifting and refining influences a means of help and education that you little guess the power of for good. For every plant is a teacher, and a preacher of the gospel of beauty, and its mission is to brighten and broaden every life that comes under its influence. All that it asks is an opportunity to fulfill that mission.
If no one cares for the plants you have no use for, give them a place in out-of-the-way nooks and corners—in the roadside, even, if there is no other place for them. A stock of this kind, to draw upon in case any of your old plants fail in winter, will save expense and trouble, and prevent bare spots from detracting from the appearance of the home grounds. It is always well to have a few plants in reserve for just such emergencies as this. Very frequently the odds-and-ends corner of the garden is the most attractive feature in it.
Many a place is all but spoiled because its owner finds it difficult to confine his selection of plants for it to the number it will conveniently accommodate. There are so many desirable ones to choose from that it is no easy matter to determine which you will have, because—you want them all! But one must be governed by the conditions that cannot be changed. Unfortunately the home-lot is not elastic. Small grounds necessitate small collections if we would avoid cluttering up the place in a manner that makes it impossible to grow anything well. Shrubs must have elbow-room in order to display their attractions to the best advantage. Keep this in mind, and set out only as many as there will be room for when they have fully developed. It may cost you a pang to discard an old favorite, but often it has to be done out of regard for the future welfare of the kinds you feel you must have. If you overstock your garden, it will give you many pangs to see how the plants in it suffer from the effect of crowding. If you cannot have all the good things, have the very best of the list, and try to grow them so well that they will make up in quality for the lack in quantity. I know of a little garden in which but three plants grow, but the owner of them gives them such care that these three plants attract more attention from passers-by than any other garden on that street.
Be methodical in your garden-work. Keep watch of everything, and when you see something that needs doing, do it. And do it well. One secret of success in gardening is in doing everything as if it was the one thing to be done. Slight nothing.
For vines that do not grow thick enough to hide everything with their foliage, a lattice framework of lath, painted white, is the most satisfactory support, because of the pleasing color-contrast between it and the plants trained over it. Both support and plant will be ornamental, and one will admirably supplement the other. The lattice will be an attractive feature of the garden when the vine that grew over it is dead, if it is kept neatly painted.