FoT March, 1923 



63 



What the Home Garden Should Be 



THOMAS W. HEAD 



WERE I talking- to each one individually my first 

 question would be, "What kind of a garden have 

 you?" I am sure that each could tell me some- 

 thing in reply that would interest and instruct. It is not 

 alone the extent under cultivation that measures the at- 

 tractiveness and value of one"s garden. Xo matter how- 

 small it may be if it is well done, tidy and fertile, above 

 all showing- a well defined purpose and well carried out. 

 A garden without individuality misses much of its charm. 

 Wh_\- should there not be as many types of gardening 

 as there are types of people? Nature never repeats her- 

 self, and he is a poor gardener indeed who is unable to 

 give distinctive character to the domain under his care, 

 whether it is his own little dooryard plot or a vast estate 

 of many acres. He who aims at nothing better than 

 simply to lay out his home grounds in whatever may be 

 the prevailing- style, selecting his material and its arrange- 

 ment w-ith no higher motive than to imitate wdiat some 

 one else has done, is surely entitled to our pity. 



Lord Bacon once said, "A man shall ever see that when 

 ages grow into civilization and elegance, men come to 

 build stately sooner than to garden finely." So we find in 

 this country of ours, in these communities longest settled, 

 the greatest ad\-ance made in gardening art and the people 

 more ready to divert their attention from commercial 

 engrossment to a consideration of beautifying their home 

 environments. We see the people more readily inclined 

 than some in the younger sections of our country, to 

 forsake the crude and grotesque plantings of imitations 

 of animals, birds and so forth and substitute the more 

 natural, rational and artistic arrangement and more pleas- 

 ing variety in the adornment of our parks and residential 

 grounds. There were a few who were carried away with 

 the ribbon bed craze, for a time, but -we learn by our 

 mistakes and I thiiik we can safely promise, with hand 

 uplifted, that we will never commit tl-iat ofifense again. 



But let us watch out that we do not allow ourselves to 

 go to as absurd lengths in other directions. There is a 

 suggestion of sameness in many of the shrubbery plant- 

 ings now becoming- so popular that it is as tiresome and 

 meaningless as it is unnecessary with the almost endless 

 variety of material at our disposal. If we are to make 

 fNjsitive progress in our gardening and not simply revolve 

 in cycles we must avoid crazes and fads. Our resources 

 are boundless and no single style of gardening can lay 

 claim to unquestioned superiority under any and all con- 

 siderations. Individuality is a possibility and should be 

 striven for. We have all seen streets where the houses 

 were identical in every respect, one -with the other, size, 

 architecture, color, surroundings, so that it would seem 

 that an occupant must needs look carefully at the door 

 number before venturing into his home. 



The ready-made effect leaves an unfavorable impression 

 and the monotony wearies us. By all means let us do all 

 we can to prevent such a condition in our garden scenery. 

 Tiresome repetition is as much to be deplored in belts of 

 dogwood, hydrangeas and berberis, as it was in the now 

 discarded gardening of 25 years ago when everybody felt 

 obliged to mutilate the green lawn with a scroll of red 

 coleus or geraniums edged with dusty miller or such. 



As to the laving out of a garden, as before remarked, 

 I believe in individuality, but governed of course by cor- 

 rect artistic perception, something which we all have in 

 greater or less degree, and which by observation and ex- 

 periment we may cultivate to a high plane, and so by a 

 general knowledge of the requirements and possibilities 



of plants, shrubs and trees at our disposal. I would 

 call attention to a few other features that seem indis- 

 pensable in the arrangement of an enjoyable home garden. 

 Inrst, I want some seclusion, either actual or suggested. 

 1 object to being one of a number of residents in a con- 

 tinuous park. I would not be understood to advocate 

 returning to the old style of fence division, each bit of 

 fence of a different model, height and color from its 

 neighbor, but when park-like effect in the aspect of our 

 suburban homes is secured at the expense of the home 

 idea, it costs too much. It is possible to indicate the spot 

 where our garden ends and our neighbor's garden begins, 

 to mark the division between our domestic Eden and the 

 public road and to ensure a welcome privacy, without 

 necessarily interposing a high hedge or a forbidding stone 

 wall. Tidiness, you will all agree, is an indispensable 

 requisite in the home grounds. To maintain this in its 

 fullest sense, there is plenty to be done besides keeping 

 the lawn close clipped, the weeds dug out and the litter 

 picked up. The memory of the old decrepit lilacs, honey- 

 suckles and Rose of Sharon in some of the ancient gardens 

 when I was a boy still haunt me and I can see the greatest 

 menace to the popularity of the flowering shrubs in the 

 future in a repetition of this neglect which was so largely 

 responsible for their temporary banishment from public 

 favor. However picturesque an old gnarled oak or cedar 

 niay be, a gnarled lilac has no claim on my admiration. 

 Constant attention is the price we must pay for an attrac- 

 tive, healthy shrubbery plantation. W'here trees or 

 shrubs have grown so that they are about to interfere 

 with their best development, thin them out at once before 

 the harm is done, taking away the least desirable. When 

 a specimen shows indication of ii-ifirmity, throw it out 

 and substitute a youthful one. To do this requires courage. 

 W^e will learn after a few such experiences to sympathize 

 with and pity the man in charge of public grounds, wdio, 

 in the proper carrv'ing out of the duties for which he is 

 paid, has to face unreasoning and spiteful criticism on all 

 sides from peopde who go frantic over the unavoidable 

 trimming and thinning out of half suffocated saplings in 

 an overgrown wilderness but yet look on with indifference 

 or even approval when a noble elm that has seen the 

 centuries come and go is ruthlessly destroyed to make 

 way for a trolley line. 



Our subject is an endless one. The need of wise dis- 

 cretion in the intermingling of native and foreign subjects, 

 the uses of evergreens, of climbing plants on the house, 

 of hardy perennials, of bedding plants, and annuals in 

 association with shrubbery borders, the securing of a steady 

 succession of bloom when selecting material, the maintain- 

 ing of a proper equilibrium between wildness and arti- 

 ficiality, questions of color, comjxisition, sun and shade 

 and the obligations which civilization imposes upon us to 

 see that our gardens and fields are not breeding places 

 for noxious weeds, insects, pests, these and an infinity of 

 other things suggest themselves to one when he begins 

 to think about his garden work, but space will not permit 

 me to dwell on them further. 



The garden is our most natural abode. We are told 

 that our first parents had a garden for their home but 

 that their first sin caused their expulsion from the beautiful 

 place. What a tribute, this, from the Almighty to the 

 garden. Is it strange that ever since, when man has 

 sought to find perfect happiness, he has surrounded him- 

 self with gardens, or that flowers and gardens have been a 

 (Continued on page 68) 



