A Garden with House Attached

by Sarah Warner Brooks

Another—now almost obsolete—fragrant house plant is the night-blooming jasmine. Its odor is peculiar and intense, and—as its name implies—is only emitted by night. Its foliage is not especially delicate, but nothing can be more dainty than its slender spikes of pale, greenish-white bloom. It is a thrifty plant, making in a single summer a growth of five or six feet. It is a shrub, but one could fancy that, ages ago, it must have been a "sport" of a climber, so slender and rapid is its habit of growth. After flowering-time, which begins late in July and continues until late in October, it drops most of its foliage, which is soon replaced by young, delicate shoots and fresh leaves and buds.

The Daphne odora, which combines in its small clusters of bloom the exquisite perfume of many sweet flowers, may not be lightly passed by. It is not an easy plant to manage, and often drops its buds just as they seem ready to open. By placing it in the sunny window of a cool room, and watering evenly and not too copiously, it may be brought into flower; and then nothing can be finer than its fragrance.

The more homely and familiar hyacinth is not only delightful in form, color, and odor, but may be recommended as a "safe investment," as it seldom fails to flower and needs comparatively little care.

The mahernia is another desirable fragrant plant. It is very effective in a hanging-basket. It comes in flower about the first of February, and its tiny yellow cups are brimful of delicious odor. A home-bred mahernia makes fine foliage, but seldom blooms abundantly; it is, therefore, best to procure the plant from the florist when fully budded. It will then flower well in a sunny window, and for three or four weeks one's room will be as sweet as summer. The wax-plant, though properly a summer blooming plant, sometimes flowers in winter. Its blossoms are very odorous, especially by night, and in structure and color they are exquisite. It is a long-lived plant, easily raised and tended, and, being a climber, may be tastefully trained on a trellis, where, with its glossy, rubber-like leaves, it is very effective. The petunia, as a window plant, blooms freely, and the white variety is fragrant—especially by night. The plant is rather ungainly in its habit of growth. To conceal its scragginess of structure twine its stems among other foliage on your stand, and place it close to the glass, and you will find it pretty and effective. And now that sweet-smelling plants are under consideration, may I not give you the details of an experiment with the common lilac as a house plant? It was made some fifteen years ago, and before I had the slightest knowledge of lilac-forcing, which is now quite common among our florists.

Early in December a stout, low bush of the hardy purple variety was, with the aid of a pickaxe, dislodged from the frost-bound earth, and with its frozen ball of sod still adhering, thus treated: a large nail-keg, having an auger-hole in its bottom on which some bits of crock were strewn, was filled to about half its depth with warm stable manure; on this the dry leafless bush, with its frozen soil, was set, and the keg filled in with mellow loam. After a good watering, the keg was placed in a deep pan, which was then filled with boiling water, and the whole set near a huge hall stove. The hot water was daily renewed at the bottom, and before many days leaf and flower-buds began to swell on the hard, bare stems of the bush. When these were well formed and the tiny buds quite distinguishable among the pale green foliage, the lilac was removed from its dim corner beside the stove, and given an entire east window in the long hall, where the temperature ranged from forty to sixty, and sometimes as high as seventy degrees. In about two months from the time of housing fourteen large and perfect clusters of pearl-white lilacs rejoiced our eyes. These blossoms were far more delicate in odor than out-door lilacs, and made a delightful atmosphere of spring-time in the homely old farm-house which was then our dwelling-place. We had, too, the novel pleasure of surprising our friends with clusters of fresh lilac in February.

French florists, who give much attention to lilac-forcing, lay great stress upon the necessity of keeping the bush in the dark in order to bleach the flowers—white lilacs being most marketable, and the common purple lilac most available for forcing on account of its superior vitality. Fortunately I stumbled upon the right treatment, and mine seemed to come white of their own sweet will.

For a hanging-basket use the oxalis, of which there are many beautiful varieties. It flowers abundantly, but as the season advances, must be stimulated with repeated applications of liquid manure and soot tea, that its foliage may not lose its vigor and become straggly. Wandering Jew, though structurally coarse, is a good hanging plant, and will accommodate itself to any exposure, really doing its very best in a north window. Ivy geranium is another hanging plant, beautiful in structure, and with its double rose-pink blossoms, as in the improved varieties, most fair to see. It demands strong food, much moisture, and oceans of sunlight. Madeira vine and German ivy both make effective hanging-baskets. The latter is too alluring to the green fly to make its house-culture easy or satisfactory. Smilax, if trained on strings, in a sunny window, is exquisitely delicate, and its blossom is odorous. The English ivy, as in-door greenery, is delightful. I have attempted its culture, but my experience being but a series of ignoble defeats, is not commendable. I wish it were! The odious scale has at last compelled me to abandon the field. I must also confess to repeated failure with in-door geraniums. Mine have not bloomed well, and a geranium without its blossoms is a poor affair (not including the scented varieties). Last autumn, after having tried many methods with many kinds, I turned over a new leaf in geranium culture. All my best geraniums were consigned to an upper room, where no furnace heat could reach them, and where, in cold nights, the temperature falls perilously near to freezing point. The plants have a southern window, and through the day the room is moderately warmed from the ascending heat of the kitchen. Geraniums (and fuchsias and nasturtiums as well) have taken kindly to this low temperature, the geraniums blooming as finely as in the open during summer. Many of us have, no doubt, seen floating about in print, the little story of that pot of geranium which was the sole bequest of a dying man to his family, who carefully tended this precious, though not pecuniarily valuable legacy. When spring came the pot was reverently committed to the cemetery lot to summer close beside the grave of the buried husband and father. On removing it in autumn, the plant was found to have outgrown its quarters, and was tenderly dislodged for repotting. To the great surprise of these good people a hollow false bottom was found in the original pot, and on its removal a little fortune in bank notes was disclosed, which, as the story ran, had obligingly kept themselves intact for the heirs in this odd storing-place. This tale has been cited of late by a scientific floriculturist, as evidence of the deplorable ignorance of the common mind in regard to absolutely necessary conditions for growth demanded by a plant. "A geranium," he authoritatively tells us, "cannot exist without drainage, hence an account which asserts that one has for months survived the ordeal of a tight-bottom pot can have no foundation in fact." So we have been taught, but, alas for the infallibility of time-honored theories! In the material world new discoveries are continually upsetting old conclusions; and we are now told that our geraniums and fuchsias have a natural affinity for tight-bottomed tomato cans! The finest geranium in my present collection has the proud distinction of growing in a water-tight lard kettle. Though a young and blooming plant, it was held in light esteem by its owner because of a vicious tendency to magenta, and in the autumn, no pot being at hand, was given this apparently thin chance of survival. Not only has it carried its buds and blossoms straight on through the entire winter, but it has graciously overcome its perversity in the matter of color, changing from a glaring magenta to a deep and lovely rose. In the same group is a large white geranium three years old, which, after blooming all summer in the garden, has never once, throughout the winter, been out of bud and blossom. This well-behaved plant grows in an old butter tub which stands squarely on its "own" sound "bottom," unmutilated by gimlet or auger. The plant had, in late winter, ten clusters of bud and bloom, while its small neighbor of the lard kettle had six. A nasturtium, in the same window, flowers abundantly, and a fuchsia beside it is a paragon among plants. All these have had weekly applications of manure water and soot tea, and have not been kept over-wet. Especially is this true of the geraniums—which may, perhaps, partly explain their dispensing with drainage. The finest hyacinth I have ever grown in the house perfected in a handleless fancy pitcher which had no outlet at the bottom. Having no pot of the right size, some lumps of charcoal were thrown into this make-shift affair, the soil tossed in, and the bulb, not without serious misgivings, carefully planted. It flowered late, but its foliage was abundant and its bloom exquisite. It gave me five perfect rose-colored spikes. These all, in common with my other plants (excepting ferns and aspidistras) were well fed with liquid manure and soot tea, and, in potting, a little wood ashes was added to the soil.

That very old-fashioned plant, the bridal-rose, is a free winter bloomer, and has a kindly way of sending up a perpetual supply of shoots for one's neighbors and friends. But, taking roses altogether, they are not profitable house plants. The constant battle with insect pests is fatiguing, and one cannot spray and fumigate and spray and fumigate incessantly, as the florist does. Now and then, after hard labor, virtue has its reward in the shape of an exquisite rose or two, but even then, "the play is scarce worth the candle."

The same may be said of carnations, which not only teem with insects, but require a much lower temperature than we have in our living rooms, as also do winter violets.

As to the finer uses of house plants, I have but time to suggest, in conclusion, that whoever cultivates them from sheer material satisfaction in their growth, from mere pleasure in their structural perfection, or with an eye single to their market value (as a florist naturally must), overlooking their poetical—I had almost said their religious side—has grasped but a small portion of the delight to be derived from floriculture, and has wholly missed that divine inspiration, that mental help, which emanates from "a thing of beauty" and makes it "a joy forever."