Buildings and Yards. 



483 



horticultural novelties may then be used to touch up the place; if they 

 are used to excess, the area looks exotic. On both buildings and yards 

 it is easy to place too much mere ornament. 



8. Flower-gardens and vegetable-gardens should be at one side or in 

 the rear. Flower-gardens are for the growing of crops of flowers, and 

 they should be in good soil and in a place wdiere they can receive good 

 care; they cannot have good care in little isolated beds in the lawn, and 

 moreover, they have no relation to anything else in that position. Bulbs 

 appear to better advantage when seen as an edging to a group of shrub- 

 bery or as a border, than when standing in a mound in the middle of the 

 yard. Many flowering plants can be grown in the borders, about the 

 foundations of the house, sometimes along or near a walk, but these are 

 for the purpose of heightening the effect of the place as a whole and they 

 are subordinate ; flowers grown for flowers need tillage, manure, training, 

 the same as a good vegetable-garden does. One would not think of grow- 

 ing beets and cabbages in pinched holes in 

 the sod ; yet we try to grow geraniums and 

 pansies in such places. 



You want a flower-garden that will pro- 

 duce you the best crop of flowers, just as 

 you want a vegetable-garden to produce the 

 best crop of vegetables. A selection can be 

 made of the common flowers that will give 

 abundance of bloom throughout the season. 

 If you have strength and time for it, it may 

 be well to have a formally laid out flower- 

 garden, with regular walks and edgings. 

 This will consume much labor for the 

 amount of crop that is produced, but it may 

 yield another kind of satisfaction that is 

 well worth the while ; for it is not all of 

 garden-craft merely to grow good flowers. 



If there are children in the family, 

 an area should be set aside for their use in 

 the making of gardens. It is astonishing 

 how little the farm boy in general knows 

 about the propagating and growing of 

 plants ; yet this should come as a kind of natural knowledge, developed 

 as the child grows. It is astonishing, also, how little aft'ectionate regard 

 he may have for the plants ; yet this should be acquired on a farm, for it is 

 naturally a part of farm life. 



9. It is advisable in most cases to make low plantings against the 

 foundations of the house, in order to relieve the hard lines and to tie the 

 building to the greensward. This can easily be so managed as to prevent 



Fig. 299. — A swamp white oak 

 in winter. The branch-fonn 

 is characteristic. 



