If You're Going to Live in the Country

by Thomas H. Ormsbee; Renee Richmond Huntley Ormsbee

Rock gardens are most picturesque and lend themselves to a large variety of hardy and interesting plants. The most successful are those where nature supplies the framework. One of the loveliest we ever saw had originally been a pigsty. Halfway up a hillside two large boulders jutted out and below them a rocky formation descended in shelf-like steps to a level surface. Ingenious planting and patient care transformed this into a mass of color and bloom that has been admired for miles. Its owner has gradually expanded it and has even added rocks dug from a neighboring field. The farmer who supplied them shook his head resignedly. "Well, I've lived in these parts a long time and seen plenty of queer things. I can understand paying a man to dig out rocks but this is the first time I was ever asked to dump them on good land."

The formal garden is usually part of the development of the very ambitious country estate. Such grounds are the result of plans prepared by a practicing landscape architect, engaged on a fee basis as with other architects. According to the arrangements he will prepare the plans or he will also supervise their execution. While there are some remarkable formal gardens in America, beautifully designed and kept in perfect condition by skillful gardeners engaged by the year, most homes do not have such sophisticated settings.

Popular indeed is an area of well-kept lawn surrounded by naturalistic plantings of trees, shrubs, and hedges that give privacy and frame the whole. Add to this borders of flowering plants, annuals and perennials, and from spring to late fall such a spot becomes an outdoor living room. Here the family spends most of its time. Real enthusiasts eat many of their meals here.

As for the vegetable garden, keep it small. The new country dweller's first garden is usually three times the size needed or that he can take care of. Vegetables have a way of either producing nothing or bearing in such abundance that the average family is swamped in plenty. Whether or not the excess is canned, depends on the time and energy of the housewife or her cook. With green vegetables now available the year around, there are two schools of thought as to the real economy of home canning. There is even plenty of controversy over the question of a family vegetable garden. Some hold that after the normal charges for fertilizer, seeds and labor are met, any vegetables that may result actually cost far more than if bought in the retail market. To this the pro-gardenites retort that the charges for seeds and fertilizer are small and that a certain amount of struggle with spade and hoe is good for a man who has spent all day in a stuffy office. Let him do his own spading, cultivating, and planting. A half hour or so every evening will keep the garden free of weeds and, in due time, vegetables fresh from the garden will result. They will be superior in flavor and will actually have cost less than even the largest chain stores can afford to sell them for.

Out of ten years' experience, we can only state that both are right in a measure. Whether or not a vegetable garden pays, breaks even, or goes into the red, depends to a large degree on the owner himself. If he has a flair for making things grow and has a definite amount of time to devote to them, his garden will not only thrive but pay dividends. But if a business trip is imperative just at the time the garden should be planted, or some pressing engagement causes him to defer transplanting his cabbages and his tomato plants beyond the proper time, he must either get some one to take care of his garden or do without one. There is a lure, however, to having your own vegetables, so most of us close our eyes to any distressing figures on the household ledger and go ahead and have a garden anyway.

One busy man compromises by having his garden prepared for planting by a local man of all work who also keeps his grass cut and his borders trimmed. Then he plants a few easily grown and tended vegetables, such as lettuce, parsley, string beans, carrots, spinach, crookneck squash, tomatoes, and corn. Around these, like a border, he plants showy annuals like zinnias, cosmos, calendula, marigolds and so forth. His garden is a colorful, attractive spot. He has vegetables for the table and plenty of flowers for cutting. The latter preclude any argument over whether his garden pays since, oddly enough, the subject of a flower garden never seems to take a mercenary turn.

Distinct additions to the kitchen garden are an herb bed, a few rhubarb plants, and an asparagus bed. The latter, because it takes time to become established, seems difficult but laying out a proper bed is not so hard. Also, in two to three years the plants will have reached the stage where the larger stalks may be cut for consumption. At first this should be done judiciously in order not to kill the plants but after another year or two the bed will yield consistently. After it is well established, it provides the first home-grown vegetables of spring and bears for about six weeks. Afterwards all it requires is an occasional weeding and fall mulching with fertilizer and leaves.

As for the tools that keep gardens and grounds in condition, a special shed is advisable. Don't try to keep them in a tool house or section given over to saws, planes, chisels and bits. They get in a hopeless jumble. Nothing is more discouraging than to go out to what should be a tidy little spot to do a bit of mending or minor job of carpentry and find earth encrusted garden trowels, weeders, and such gear scattered all over the work bench. The grit so adhering is fatal to sharp-edged tools, while sprays, dusting powders, and fertilizers give off fumes that rust them.

We would also add a few kind words for the various berries and small fruits. Except for strawberries, which must be kept weeded and replanted periodically, berries are our ideal of easily cared for fruits. Raspberries, for instance, never become really cheap in the market because of their perishable nature. Yet with the very minimum of care, cutting out old canes after the bearing season is over and keeping weeds down with a mulch of hay, a comparatively small patch of red raspberries, within three years of planting, will produce all the fruit an average family can eat or be willing to pick. The other variety, known as "black caps," are no more trouble and equally prolific. These are at their best in pie and, for the pleasures of a succession of fresh black raspberry pies each summer, we heartily recommend planting a dozen canes at the same time that the red raspberry patch is started.

Blackberry canes grow so rankly and bear such brutal thorns that the annual crop seems hardly worth the torn clothing and bad scratches that gathering them entails, especially as they are to be had at such reasonable prices in the average market. Blueberries are another matter. Three or four good bushes of the kind offered by most nurseries will keep the family in blueberry pie with little effort on the part of the person who gathers them. Currants and gooseberries are easily grown but have one serious fault. These bushes harbor plant pests that work havoc with evergreens and a number of the ornamental shrubs. For that reason we long ago eradicated any growing on our place.