30 FLOWER GARDENING 



you mentally distinguish the pine as an evergreen 

 tree or the grape as a deciduous vine. 



A frequent cause of failure with flowers is what 

 may as well be called footlessness as anything else. 

 That is about what it is; an aimless plunging into 

 the task with good intentions but an appalling 

 lack of common sense. Footlessness cuts a strip 

 fifteen inches wide out of the lawn on the west side 

 of the house, and quite near it, and plants in what 

 it is pleased to call a border some roses or some 

 peonies, without any enrichment of the poor soil. 

 Common sense would have ascertained before a 

 spade was put in the ground that roses and peonies 

 must have a sunnier position, that they are gross 

 feeders and that without a wider border the grass 

 would encroach on their territory in no time. 



Footlessness plants sweet peas in dry, poor soil, 

 three weeks late at that, and then wonders why 

 the woman next door "always has such good luck" ; 

 it undertakes, to establish a rose garden in an ob- 

 viously unsuitable location ; it piles manure on top 

 of foxgloves, which become rotten pulp before 

 spring, and then cannot see why they should "win- 

 ter kill"; it takes home plants that friends have 

 given and sticks them in the ground with so little 

 care and thought that the wail that they "didn't 

 live" goes up; it transplants hollyhocks six inches 

 apart and pansies fifteen it does a thousand things 

 wrong. And all for the want of taking pains to 

 find out the right road to travel. 



Taking pains looms large in the garden gospel. 



