Adorning Rural Homes. 191 



of the household. Women can find no more delightful or healthful employ- 

 ment than the care and culture of flowers and fruits in the garden. 



The first and most essential requisite for the adornment of a rural home 

 is, that the owner should possess an unconquerable love for the beautiful in 

 nature — a love for trees and plants and fruits so great that he can not be 

 happy without them. This will remove all difficulties, and success will fol- 

 low. Then the arrangement of the buildings should receive due attention. 

 Each one should be so placed as to invite ornamentation by tree or vine, and 

 also so situated as to increase this beauty when planted. 



The dwelling should be some rods from the public road, and also from the 

 other buildings, to give room for a spacious lawn, which should be covered 

 with grass in any climate where nature spreads this lovely carpet; where 

 she does not, there is more abundant room for carpet gardening and bedding 

 plants. Then the fruit and vegetable garden should be located a pleasant 

 distance from the house — near enough to be seen and enjoyed and cared for 

 by the family. A garden on each side of the lawn, wherever this is practi- 

 cable, will be found very satisfactory. To secure a certain growth of trees 

 and shrubs, begin with such as can be found growing in the same locality. 

 This will insure success in the first efforts. 



Many very desirable trees, and some very beautiful ones, can easily be found 

 growing in their native wilds. To these should be added such new varieties 

 as have been tested and found hardy; with these should be set the hardy 

 fruit trees, a few at a time, if necessary, and with great carefulness. Do not 

 say, " I can not plant a large orchard, so I will plant none at all." A few 

 trees set each year will give you a growing interest and a better orchard in 

 the end, especially when trees are short lived, than a large number that may 

 leave you, en masse, suddenly, as they come. The fruit bearing shrubs should 

 be grown in every garden; they will furnish berries for the table a longer 

 time than any of the other small fruits. 



The vegetable garden, also, with its long list of edibles, and its annual 

 fruits, is an ornament as well as a necessity to any home. 



First in this garden we will plant the strawberry ; it grows so rapidly, bears 

 so abundantly, and will grow in any climate from Greenland to the Gulf ; 

 all can have the strawberry. We can not recall the time when we did not 

 know and prize this fine old fruit. We all have pleasant memories of the 

 sunny hillsides and green meadows where we gathered the earliest wild 

 strawberries. How faithfully we hunted every berry from its hiding place. 

 and how eagerly we hastened homeward to show our treasurers to the loved 

 mother who waited our coming. Yes, we will plant the strawberry, and we 

 will care for it well, and with every returning season we will gather the de- 

 licious fruit, with happiest memories of the wild berries of our child- 

 hood, and with unnumbered thanks and blessings for those who, by careful 

 culture, have given us the magnificent berries of the present day. Then we 

 must find a place for that royal old fruit, the grape. This, too, was one of the 

 wild fruits we gathered in the long ago. Then we thought the little purple 



