CHAPTER XI 



The Home Window Garden 



By Edith Loring Fullerton 



||1E HAVE had only three years' experience in window garden- 

 ing, and have made no special study of the subject. When 

 my husband and I first became interested, we found 

 great difficulty in getting advice of practical value. The 

 articles we read were either too technical, or so vague 

 and lacking in detail that we decided to go right ahead anyhow, making 

 our own blunders in our own way; and we resolved to have as much "fun" 

 as possible, whatever happened. Our point of view has been expressed by 

 the man of the family in a letter to a friend as follows : 



"The pictures which I send you show the entire plants (without any 

 frills or fake), which were raised in this particular window by two 'simon- 

 pure' amateurs, in a cheaply constructed house, alleged to be warmed by a 

 gas-belching furnace during an erratic winter and a phenomenal February, 

 with a further plant- handicap of a new-born babe, which was not only first 

 in our thoughts, but required a high temperature to be maintained by night 

 as well as by day. Our window garden is a two-by-four affair, composed 

 of a couple of greenhouse sash which I screw on in the fall and take off in 

 the spring, and you could buy the whole thing, bulbs and all, I presume, for 

 five dollars." 



This is a masculine way of summing up the case. The photographs 

 on pages 179, 180, and 183 are our own pictures of our own plants. If I 

 may paraphrase, "they are poor things, but our own." The other pictures 

 which accompany this description show better plant specimens and greater 

 photographic skill, but the results, I believe, are not beyond the reach of 

 the skilled amateur. Following is a detailed description of our plant nursery: 



There are two adjoining windows on the south side of our house giving 

 on to a small balcony. In October we remove the sash from these windows 

 and screw up the window garden. It is really a bulk window with a glass 

 roof ; the roof is on hinges, and can be raised to admit of ventilation. The 



