THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF GARDENING
CHAPTER I
THE SITUATION AND SOIL
The first thing to decide is that you really want a garden of your own, and mean to work in it and keep it clean and tidy. The next thing is to learn a little about situation and soil, because you cannot choose which plants to grow until you know what conditions you can give them. You must not think that you can ram any plants into any patch of ground with success. There are a few that are obliging and will live almost anywhere, but even these will generally show you by their size and health whether they like their home or not. Many will just exist, but not do well without the food or place that suits them, while others will die unless they have what they want.
If you can possibly avoid it, do not have your garden under trees or large shrubs, or close to an evergreen hedge. The drip from trees is bad for nearly all plants, and the big roots made by trees and shrubs exhaust the soil. Besides, on account of the roots, you cannot dig the ground properly and feed it with manure. However, if your choice is between a shady garden and none, you should certainly take it, and learn what can be done with it. Later on in the book we will tell you which plants will do well in such a spot, and how you should treat them. The best situation for a garden is one that gets the morning sun, and is either right out in the open or sheltered on the north. It is best for the plants and best for you, because in a warm, sunny corner you can often work on days when it would not be safe in the chilly parts of the garden.
Do not have a large plot if you mean to look after it without help: twelve feet long by seven feet wide would be enough, and even a smaller piece could be made into a pretty garden. If you have more than you can keep tidy, the grown-ups will be sorry they let you have a garden at all, and some day they will say that the gardener wants your bit of sunny border for his winter lettuces, and that you had better take yourself and your weeds and your mess away to that no-man’s-land in the shrubbery, where nothing much will grow, and where it is always sad and chilly. So we will imagine that your garden is twelve feet long and seven feet wide, and that the sun shines on it whenever it is fine.
Whether your plot is a bed by itself or part of a wide border, it will not be easy and pleasant to manage unless you make a path through the centre—a dry, hard, narrow path, on which you can stand or kneel when you are at work amongst your plants. Across the breadth would be the most convenient position. To do this you should get a penny piece of tape, because it is easier to see and keep straight than string. Measure the length of your garden with it, having tied one end of the tape to a stick and put the stick firmly into one corner of the ground. Tie a knot in the tape when you reach the other corner. Then carry the knot back to the stick, and the doubled tape will mark the centre of the whole length. Put a stick into the ground there. Then you get two other sticks, and put them nine inches on either side of the centre one, so as to get your eighteen-inch path exactly measured at the top of your garden. The other side of the garden may be measured in the same way, and the centre sticks removed at either end. Then you bring your tape right along both sides of your path, tying it to your sticks at each end, so that you have two straight lines to guide you. If you are going to make your path yourself, you must now take your spade and dig out all the earth to the depth of ten inches. This will be hard work, and take you several days, but if you want your path to be dry and firm it must be done. The earth you throw out should be divided as evenly as possible between your two beds, and be neatly spread on them when you have finished. The deep trench you make by digging must be filled with broken stones or pieces of brick well stamped down, and afterwards covered with gravel or fine stones. Now you will have two borders, each seven feet long and five feet three inches wide. If you choose you can make one side a flower garden and the other side a kitchen garden, and in your kitchen garden you can grow some flowers as well as vegetables. In any case, you will be glad of your path, and if your plot is smaller than the one we recommend, you should make it on one side instead of in the middle. As far as possible, you should do all your gardening from it, so that the soil around the plants does not get trodden down too hard. Most plants like to have a firm hold with their roots, but not to have a caked surface that keeps out the air and rain.
Before you put in any plants you must pay some attention to the state of your soil. Even grown-ups often seem to think that earth is earth, and that any flowers will nourish in any ground. But, as a matter of fact, plants are even more various and dainty about their food than human beings; they answer as well to clever treatment, and they look as starved as slum children when they are not properly fed. Gardeners usually tell you that nearly everything will nourish in a good loam, and that it may be either natural or the result of cultivation. Soil of this kind is a mixture of clay, sand, and humus, and is easily worked. In or near London you generally get abominable soil in your garden, because the builders have dug out the good stuff and replaced it with any kind of rubbish. Everyone knows the London mixture of black, sticky clay, broken bricks and bottles, and the roots of grimy trees and shrubs. Many things will no more thrive in such a medium than a baby would on lobster salad. If you have to begin your gardening career with a builder’s rubbish-heap, you must be content to grow some of the strongest things, such as Starworts, Foxgloves, Nasturtiums, and some bulbs, and to renew them every year.
Roughly speaking, soils may be divided into heavy and light—those that hold wet and those that do not. The heavy kinds are mostly clay, though pure peat retains a great deal of moisture. The light soils are gravel, limestone, and sand. If you are used to a heavy clay soil, you will envy the people who have a light sandy one; and then some day when you come to work a hungry, sandy garden, you will wish for some of the sticky soil that is not easy to handle, but which many plants love. In either case you must try to improve matters, and to do this you must first find out what your soil is. In a limestone country you need not add lime, but it would be good for clay. In Holland pure sand has been made fertile by the addition of cow manure.