2664 



PLANTING 



PLANTING 



or incidental effects of clumps and nooks here and there. 

 Fig. 3006 shows a wild-garden composition; ordinarily, 

 a wild-garden is supposed to be merely "wild" or grow- 

 ing at random, as in Fig. 3007, and this effect is some- 

 times much to be desired. The nook or corner effect 

 of planting (4) is shown in Fig- 3008, representing a 

 rear screen. 



Wild-gardening as a distinct department of floricul- 

 ture first came into popularity about 1870, when "The 

 Wild Garden" was written by William Robinson. 

 Robinson's first aim was to introduce more variety into 

 English gardens, which were monotonously gaudy in 

 the Victorian era. Because of their greater showiness, 

 tropical bedding-plants had driven hardy perennial 

 flowers out of fashion. Robinson put the border on an 

 artistic plane by paying more attention to grouping, 

 color schemes, and new varieties; he popularized the 

 rock- and water-garden; and he created the wild- 

 garden. His second aim in wild-gardening was to 

 reproduce some of the loveliest floral pictures of the 



3005. A background protection for an architectural construction.- 

 Temple entrance, Nikko, Japan. 



North Temperate zone which demand freedom from 

 the garden inclosure. A third aim was to make a place 

 for thousands of plants worth growing that are ban- 

 ished from conventional gardens because they have 

 small flowers, a short season, or are unsightly when out 

 of bloom. A fourth aim was to satisfy the universal 

 craving for wildness. 



The areas most commonly used for wild-gardening 

 are woods, meadows, and orchards. Unfortunately, 

 orchards cannot usually be kept in grass for many years, 

 as in Europe. Those who are the fortunate possessors 

 of waterside, bluffs, rocks, or sandy wastes have special 

 opportunities for wild-gardening. Those who are con- 

 fined to city lots can merely suggest the spirit of wild- 

 gardening in lawns and borders. 



The finest effects in wild-gardening are suggested not 

 by book-study but by nature-study, paying special 

 attention to grouping and massing. For example, if the 

 problem is to cover a bank, the books suggest locust, 

 willows, or other suckering plants. The beginner then 

 covers the bank exclusively with locusts or willows, 

 which produces an artificial or gardenesque effect. 

 Nature rarely adopts a one-plant solution of any prob- 

 lem. She generally grows three or four crops on the same 

 ground, e. g., tree, shrub, and vine, or shrub, carpeting- 

 plant, and bulb. 



If one follows the nearest river-bank for a mile or 

 so, the finest combination may be buckeye, wild goose- 

 berry, and American bluebells, or sumach, blue phlox, 

 and adder's-tongue. Such combinations always give 

 more variety than one-plant solutions, generally more 



color, and look wilder because they represent a mode of 

 living worked out by ages of struggle. When one com- 

 bines roses, lilacs, and peonies on a sand-hill, the plants 

 look unhappy, especially in August, but if one plants 

 red cedar and bay berry the plants soon look as if they 

 had been there from time immemorial. The skill of the 

 wild-gardener lies in detecting plant associations that 

 will solve each practical problem and look as if they 

 were hundreds of years old. 



In massing plants so as to imitate nature the com- 

 monest notion is to scatter them indiscriminately, but 

 this is no longer considered the surest and quickest way 

 to produce the finest effects. The showiest floral effect 

 in nature is the solid mass or sheet of flowers of a single 

 kind. But this is not the finest or wildest effect. Wil- 

 liam Robinson often takes the clouds as patterns in out- 

 lining his colonies. Clouds also suggest good combina- 

 tions of density and thinness in sowing seeds or plant- 

 ing bulbs. One of the finest floral effects in nature is 

 the kind of massing known as "the mother country 

 and her colonies." The object is to suggest that 

 the flowers have sprung from seed scattered by the 

 prevailing wind. The outlying masses, therefore, 

 follow one general direction (without being in 

 straight lines), and they decrease in number, size, 

 and density as they recede from the largest mass. 



Design in wild-gardening. 



In the woods one generally has the greatest 

 opportunity for intensifying the feeling of wildness, 

 because it is often possible to shut out all suggestion 

 of the outside world including even the sounds of 

 civilization. Therefore, woods are generally sur- 

 rounded by an irregular belt of native shrubs dense 

 enough to hide artificial objects from the interior 

 of the wood, leaving openings only for the main 

 trails. The entrances can be marked without mak- 

 ing them too gardenesque by saving or planting 

 any trees that naturally form a good arch or frame, 

 as white pine often does, by planting some accent 

 marks, such as red cedar, arbor-yitae, canoe birch, 

 and mountain-ash, or by training into a bower vines 

 such as wild grape, clematis, bittersweet, or Virginia 

 creeper. A system of trails is next established and 

 the planting is usually made near the trails, from 

 which the colonies are generally expected to spread 

 gradually into the remoter parts of the wood. To secure 

 the finest effects, however, it is necessary to plant the 

 dramatic, or picturesque places, such as spring, brook, 

 rocks, glades, hilltop, or outlook with the wild flowers 

 appropriate to each situation. Wild-gardening in the 

 woods is also known as landscape forestry. 



In meadows it is possible to allow daffodil bulbs to 

 multiply for many years, since they may not interfere 

 with the hay crop. The foliage ripens and falls to the 

 ground before harvest. Bulbs that bloom after har- 

 vest-time, like Lilium superbum, are best restricted to 

 the edges of the meadow. But the sunny meadow 

 generally offers the greatest canvas for painting floral 

 pictures daffodils by the 10,000 and narcissi either 

 in sheets or colonies. 



In fields, however, wild-gardening involves serious 

 economic loss. Despite this fact, many efforts have 

 been made to imitate the European grain-fields made 

 glorious by Papaver Rhoeas, the scarlet annual weed 

 which is the parent of the Shirley poppies. The seed is 

 cheap but the poppies bloom in a half-hearted fashion 

 and vanish after a year or two. 



In permanent pastures wild-gardening is limited to 

 species that are not eaten by cattle, and the effects are 

 necessarily scattering or spotty. On a hillside at Grave- 

 tye, Robinson has naturalized the oriental poppy in 

 isolated clumps of about a dozen plants. This is per- 

 haps the most daring feat with which a wild-gardener 

 may hope to succeed, for foreign flowers as gorgeous 

 as this cannot pass themselves off as wild flowers. The 



