Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

A FEW FLOWERS EASILY RAISED.

February 22d, 1868.

The love of flowers is steadily increasing among the common people of America, and anything which shall increase the knowledge and skill of the plain people in the management of flowers will be a contribution to the public welfare.

Those that are rich can command the services of expert gardeners, and need no advice from me. But there are thousands who have ground enough around their dwellings, and yet have little knowledge in the selection of plants and flowers, and little skill in the cultivation of them, to whom I may be of some service if I give such hints as have been derived chiefly from my own experience.

Assuming, then, that my reader has given but little attention to the cultivation of flowers, and that he needs to be told the simplest things, I would begin by recommending him to send for a catalogue of flowers to Mr. Vick, Rochester, N. Y., or to Mr. B. K. Bliss, of Park Place, New York, or Mr. Thorburn, John Street, also New York; not, as might at first be supposed, for the sake of the list of seeds, but because each catalogue contains brief directions how to prepare the ground, how to sow various kinds of seeds, etc., etc. With such hints as these catalogues afford, one can begin. The very first step is to succeed the first year in admirably raising one or two things. If one undertakes too much before having practical experience he will fail, become disgusted, and give up the whole effort at flowers in discouragement. But the exquisite delight of seeing a bed of flowers, of your own raising, and thoroughly good, will be apt to inspire a real ambition, and lay the foundation for future success with more difficult flowers.

I will suppose a young lady, who never has cultivated flowers, but who can afford to hire a man’s services for one or two days in the spring. She is to perform all the rest of the work herself. What shall she plant?

Morning-glories. If possible, select a place which the morning sun will not reach before nine or ten o’clock in the forenoon, in order to save the daily bloom from withering before you have had half enough enjoyment. Let the ground be made mellow, and enriched with black dirt from the woods, or with old and well-decayed barn-yard manure, or, if neither are convenient, with a pint of superphosphate of lime to each square yard of ground, well mixed into the soil. This can now be bought in almost every large town, or the merchant who sells seeds will procure it for you.

The common sorts of morning-glories, if combined, will answer well. But one who would do the best should have two beds, one of the Convolvulus and the other of Ipomea. The difference is of importance only to a botanist. To the common eye the flowers are the same. Of Ipomeas there is a puce-colored one, which blossoms late in the afternoon, named Buona Nox; a mazarine-blue, shading to red (Learii); a sky-blue with white edge, called in the catalogue—don’t be afraid!—Ipomea hederacea superba grandiflora, i. e. the superb great-flowering ivy-leaved Ipomea. And then there is a very fine variety of this same one, whose Latin name you will get by adding to the above the compound word Atro-violacea. One more name, viz. Ipomea limbata elegantissima.

Plant the seeds as soon as the frost is finally out of the ground. Let there be pales, or strings, or trellis, arranged for them to climb upon, and you will have all summer long, and till the frost kills them, a magnificent show of exquisite blossoms every morning; Sundays as well as week-days, for flowers wear their Sunday clothes all through the week. We have derived as much pleasure from these morning-glories

as from any one thing in our garden. They are healthy and hearty growers, not infested with insects, profuse in bloom, surpassing all blossoms in exquisite form and delicacy, and, what is of prime importance, holding forth through the whole summer, whether hot or cold, wet or dry.