526 GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS 



short, and digging up deep sods. In places where top sods are cut 

 thin for burning and young heather springs up afresh, these, with the 

 young plants about 3 inches high, would do well, or the seedlings 

 could be taken up in hundreds and planted in peaty soil. Bracken 

 can also be planted in the same way, cutting out large deep sods. 

 This is much better than getting the roots out clean, as they take 

 a long time to recover, and very few grow at all. The best places to 

 take it from are where the ground is very poor and it grows very 

 short. 



Labour-saving Appliances are Important. A writer in The 



Garden lays stress upon the importance of having the best labour- 

 saving appliances. " Many, perhaps most, agree that it is ' all in the 

 day's work,' and that any arrangement for simplifying and reducing 

 work is a useless expense, giving the gardener more time to idle 

 about." A long experience shows this to be a serious blunder. If 

 the employer shows no appreciation of the value of time, and no 

 objection to wasting it with inferior tools and appliances, the man 

 naturally follows his employer's lead, and sets little value on his own 

 time, which can easily be wasted in a garden. We always keep the 

 best labour-saving appliances, and see they are used ; a poor tool is 

 cleared out of the way, and the men spend the time, which would 

 otherwise be wasted, on improving all round. Work is better done, 

 and many things are done which would be impossible if we went on 

 the principle of using old, bad, or indifferent tools, without considera- 

 tion as to the time they waste. One of the occupations in which a 

 very large amount of time is wasted is watering. Instead of the water 

 coming to the man, he has to carry it in most private gardens; the 

 watering-pots are clumsy, unhandy, and slow in delivery. This is a 

 point on which we might well take a lesson from the French market 

 gardener, who as a rule will, compared with us, do the same amount 

 of watering in less than half the time, and with much less labour. He 

 arranges his beds so that he can use two cans, one in each hand. The 

 same thing occurs in the pruning; one man will spend more time 

 in climbing up and down a ladder than another requires to do the 

 whole with proper tools, and so on through the garden work. Money 

 devoted to good labour-saving appliances is always well spent, and a 

 good gardener takes a pride both in having and in using them. 



Plants for Garden Vases- The question as to the best plants 

 for this use is one that often arises. In one way it is very easily 

 answered, for there can be no doubt that there are no summer plants 

 that so exactly suit the purpose as Geraniums. The habit and appear- 

 ance of the plant is exactly of the right character, and rather solid and 

 important, while its stiff half wooden stems enable it to withstand a good 

 deal of wind. Moreover, it comes out its best in the late summer and 

 early autumn, when the gardens where the important stone vases usually 

 find a home are wanted to be at their best. They are also plants that 

 gardeners are so well accustomed to growing that they can depend on 

 attaining the result desired. The choice of varieties is now so large 



