WATEE m GAEDENma 



gmprtttnce at MM m iarkniag. 



isii^'^'-j^^ /'^ "'S^i^nERE can be no su-ccessful gardening -without an abundant 

 >.$^rT^^ supply of water. So true is this, and so general, that we 

 may regard it as an axiom among practical cultivators in 

 ^^^ every part of the world. It has been always so. The his- 

 tory of gardening, back to the earliest period of which we have 

 any record, even to the fabulous gardens of antiquity, shows that 

 one of the first objects of solicitude in the formation of gardens 

 has been to provide for an ample supply of water. In all stages 

 of civilization, under every system of gardening, it has been 

 regarded not only as the basis of good culture, but an indispensa- 

 ble element of beauty. Our purpose at present, however, is to 

 ^f^ treat of it in a useful point of view only. In a countiy like ours, with 

 '^ summers intensely warm, and drouths severe and protracted, occurring 

 generally at a season when active and rapid growth is most wanted, a supply of water 

 is peculiarly important. Yet on the whole it receives comparatively little attention. 

 It is a portion of garden economy either not well understood or sadly overlooked. 



How common it is to hear people say, " Everything is dried up" — " We have not 

 had a shower in a month," The lawn is brown, as though scorched by fire. Flowers 

 and fruits are dried and shriveled on their stems before maturity. In the kitchen 

 garden, the seeds are lying dormant in the ground, or the plants are parched and 

 withered; — nothing fit for the table; the drouth has made a complete wreck. Yet 

 the gardener, he says, has been busy with his watering-pot early and late ; but he 

 had some distance to carry the water, and a sprinkling each morning or evening was 

 all he could afford. And what good has it done ? His parched and stunted perish- 

 ing crops answer, that all such watering is a mere mockery. 



It is not an occasional sprinkling that growing culinary plants require in dry 

 weather, but a daily drenching that will penetrate to every root and rootlet. These 

 plants, to be worth growing at all, should be grown rapidly. They must be succu- 

 lent and tender, which they can not be if stunted. Every one who has traveled 

 through Holland, Belgium, or France, in the summer season, and paid any attention 

 to garden products, must have remarked the excellence of all these esculents ; and if 

 they have gone further, and looked into their gardens and modes of culture, they 

 must have seen that water played a most important part in the production of this 

 excellence. Their system of watering is not a mere sprinkling in the morning and 

 evening. We see it flowing in ri\ailets through and around their garden plots, in the 

 form of an irrigation ; or deposited in barrels at every corner, conveyed in pipes from 

 a general reservoir ; and from these barrels it is taken in watering-pots, and applied 

 at all hours of the day, if necessary, until every plant has just as much as it requires, 

 considering its nature, the soil, and the weather. Under such a system, a warm and 



\(J^7^' 



Febecaey 1, 1853. 



No. IL 



