802 SUBURBAN GARDENING. 
shrubs, which are overcrowded or unhealthy, or which, growing too 
vigorously, require a gentle check to induce a sturdier and more compact 
style of growth. And now it is that he makes new plantations of nearly 
all sorts of trees, except evergreens. 
I have already indicated the method of renovating and 
preparing the soil by trenching or double digging. This plan 
can generally only be employed in that part of the garden 
which is free from crops, and is scarcely applicable to the portion 
devoted to flowers, except in such beds as have been entirely filled with 
summer flowering plants of annual duration, or those which are too tender 
to winter out of doors, and which are usually known as “bedding out plants.” 
Such beds when empty should be annually deeply dug and renovated by 
the addition of good turfy loam and partially decomposed manure. If they 
are to be used, as in suburban gardens they mostly will be, for “spring 
gardening,” this work should be done at the earliest possible time after 
the summer occupants have been remoyed, so that the planting of bulbs 
and other flower roots may be done before severe winter weather sets in; 
thus doing what will be conducive to a fine display of flowers in the 
spring by affording ample time for the plants and bulbs to get well 
rooted. In beds not required for spring bedding the digging and renova-. 
tion being done, the surface should be left as rough as possible, so that 
the largest amount of surface may be exposed to the sweetening and 
disintegrating influences of air and frost. 
This, too, is the period when the mixed flower borders should be 
enriched and stored with material for the supply of food to the occupants 
in the coming year. Every herbaceous plant and patch of bulbs left in the 
ground should have its place marked by a tally, so that unnecessary 
disturbance or injury may be avoided. Where there is sufficient 
room between the plants and bulbs the vacant spaces should be gently 
forked with a small steel digging fork, (such as everyone should possess 
for use in the flower garden,) so as to loosen the soil as much as possible. 
Having gone over the bed or border in this way, 3ome well-prepared 
compost should then be scattered all over it so as to finish it off neatly, 
though it will be better to avoid raking the surface. A handy workman 
will know how to complete the work in such a fashion as to leave it 
pleasant to look at, though sufficiently rough to get a good deal of benefit 
from the atmosphere and the varying temperature of the winter- 
Raking is a very unsatisfactory and deadening operation. It gives a 
smooth appearance to the soil and that is its only recommendation, but 
it produces a firm compact surface, very detrimental to the well-being of the 
plants, and I therefore advise the almost entire avoidance of the process, 
The preparation of the compost to be used in the renovation of 
flower borders may fitly be described here, as I fear none but good 
gardeners know anything about it. A moment’s consideration should 
satisfy any one that if plants are grown as they commonly are in the 
mixed flower border year after year in the same spot, and it is con- 
sidered undesirable or inconvenient to move them very often, the soil 
in which they are planted must annually get more and more impoverished. 
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