The religious objection to dancing having almost died out, we recommend all parents to have their children taught to dance. It is a necessary thing toward physical culture. It is the most embarrassing thing for a man later in life to find himself without the grace which dancing brings. Nothing contributes so much to Home Amusement as the informal dance. Nothing can be more innocent. If, in after-life, this accomplishment leads to late hours and to reckless love of pleasure, we must remember that all good things can be abused.
[XIII.]
GARDENS AND FLOWER-STANDS.
The making of gardens is decidedly and judiciously conceded to be a Home Amusement, and it is a pity that the new fashion of bedding-out plants, which is so beautiful in our public parks and in the pleasure grounds of the rich, should have seemed to so utterly do away with a taste for the old-fashioned gardens of early English poetry—of Miss Mitford, of every sweet New England dame of the early days, who had her garden, with its “pretty posies,” and its bed of sweet marjoram, lavender, and sage. It is, however, a hopeful sign to see in remote country towns some effort to keep up the old-fashioned idea of a pretty flower-plot, and there are always women who have the gift of making flowers “blow” and grow in a quiet way.
Yet science can help to bring the old-fashioned garden to perfection, as well as to make those artificial beds of many-leaved coleus, and steadier groups. Every garden design, every project of garden furnishing, and every item of garden work, should be governed by this consideration, that it is hard work to fight against Nature, and there is seldom thus a conquest worth obtaining. Aim modestly to gain a victory over the easily-cultivated native flowers at first, and you will secure enjoyment.
Fortunately, if gardening is pursued with earnestness, every soil and every climate will be found to produce some flowers in rare beauty and in unexpected luxuriance. Geometric plans, if well carried out, are very pretty, and the amateur gardener should learn to mass her geraniums, petunias, and pansies, her gladioli, roses, marigolds, and poppies, so as to give a good and really splendid result of color. Nature takes care to send us delicate, pale yellows and lilacs in Spring in her sweet daffy-down-dilly, and the elegant fleurs-de-lis; and the peonies come on mildly with pink and white before they dash into red. Then come the Turkish carpets of the portulaca, and so on until midsummer blazes with poppies, gladioli, and all the gorgeous zinnias. These may all be found in the commonest garden, without mentioning the larkspur, the mignonette, the petunia and the sweet-pea, and a thousand other charming common flowers. The delightful flowers which sow themselves, and those hardy bulbs, the crocus, tulip, lily of the valley, snowdrop, and hyacinth, should not be neglected. A quantity of white-lily bulbs stowed away in the garden reward one year after year with their elegant flowers and fragrance at no cost whatever. Pansies, daisies, and polyanthus keep from season to season, and carnation pinks need to be two years old before they will blossom, while the chrysanthemums make the garden gay in October.
Now for borders to the garden beds. Common grass is the best and easiest, as the gardener’s boy can cut it with a sickle each week and keep it from spreading. Or the little, cheap mosses make a pretty border, as does the periwinkle, which looks so like myrtle. To attempt a border of the gorgeous coleus requires a hothouse and an accomplished gardener. In the common large country garden rows of hollyhocks, as against a stone wall, or marking out the long walks, are most ornamental. Dahlias also are very good in groups. Phlox, that much-abused plant, is also pretty in masses. Asters too, of many varieties, delight the eye, and are easy of culture. In trying to raise shrubs, why not take the American wild pink, or azalea, the laurel and the rhododendron, and, by studying up their habits, capture them?
The best soil for the rhododendron is a peat containing much sand and much vegetable fiber. Any clean, pulverized product of vegetable decay will like them. It is their native food. The laurel is capricious, and resents the act of transplantation; but they will flourish if planted thick enough. They love company, and thrive in it. The best way to treat them is to study their quality, and to give them the same conditions which made them grow so luxuriantly on the hill-side.
But if even these plants resist you, every lady loves a rosarium, and it will go hard with her but she has a rose garden somewhere. The gardeners now sell one hundred rose roots for a dollar, at Rochester, and if planted out and attended to they give a million of dollars in pleasure back again.