THE JOYOUS ART OF GARDENING 



If you make a rose-garden, it is far more effective when the 

 roses have a setting of green. The thorn hedge I have just 

 mentioned would be excellent for this. It takes little from 

 the soil, would be dazzlingly white with blossoms in early May, 

 which would fall just in time that its leaves might make a 

 background of sober green for the roses; and in autumn again 

 would be brilliant, holding its berries well into the winter. 

 This would keep a rose-garden from looking bare and uninter- 

 esting during the "off season." In the Charleston garden 

 above mentioned, which is essentially a rose-garden, the owner 

 has a beautifully simple method of caring for his garden-beds. 

 There are rose-arbors, rose-trellises beside the paths, roses on 

 the garden walls. The garden-beds are as large as may be 

 conveniently reached, the cages are of wood, and when the 

 roses are past there are marvellous poppies and larkspur of 

 exquisite hue. When the time comes for remaking and enrich- 

 ing the garden-beds, the chicken-yard soil to the depth of six 

 inches is put on top of the beds. This is not only rich, but 

 full of seeds. The flowers spring up apace, the gardener pulls 

 up those that he does not want, and throws the stalks to the 

 ever-useful chickens. As Maeterlinck says of another device, 

 "It's curious, it's practical, and quite noiseless." 



Another blessedness in a garden which suburban folk miss 

 more often than flowers is comfort, and rarely is there any 

 provision for this. Why should we not plant so that we have 

 shade in the summer when we want it, or give a path shelter 

 from a northeast wind if it is accustomed to freeze our mar- 

 row? Why should we strive frantically to make plants grow 

 under a wide-spreading tree, when we might plant a comfort- 

 able garden-seat, and add to that a table where one might be 

 blessed with tea as often as a heroine of Mrs. Humphry Ward's ? 

 I remember a wide, low arbor at the rear of a Southern town 



