THE FLOWEK-GAEDKN. 



THE Fl,OWER-r^A.K3>E]\. 



FOR WHOM PREPARED.— What we shall say of the selection and cul- 

 ture of flowering plants and shrubs, will be adapted to beginners, rather 

 than amateurs, to the open growing— not the green-house — for there 

 are ten thousand gardens, where flowers may and should be cultivated, 

 to one green-house ; and there are ten thousand who need the elements 

 of the art to one who would be benefited by its higher instructions. 

 The work, therefore, will be practical rather than scientific, plain, ra- 

 ther than classical. 



BEST RIND OP SOIL.— For a flower-garden, a light, mellow soil is by 

 far the most preferable; the mould of the beds and borders should 

 be sifted, and raked nearly level, or with a gradual slope. The most 

 modern flower-gardens are those which are made out of a lawn, or grass- 

 plot; but where this is not already in existence, turf may be laid, after 

 the beds are formed. It is essential that the lawn or grass-walks should 

 be frequently trimmed, and more frequently rolled, to prevent the grass 

 from running to seed, and overrunning the flower-beds, and to keep 

 down the worms, and give it a neat, regular, carpet-like appearance. 

 The beds intended for the more tender flowers, should be protected from 

 the cold, cutting winds, by hedges or plantations of shrubs, and the 

 whole intersected, here and there, with winding gravel walks. The 

 practice formerly adopted, of dividing the flower-garden into a number 

 of small beds, and surrounding each with a path or gravel-walk, is now 

 laid aside by those whose taste is considered the most correct ; or, at 

 least, is confined to very small plots of ground. 



A flower-garden should be so situated, as to form an ornamental 

 appendage to the house; and, where circumstances will admit, placed 

 before windows exposed to a southern or south eastern aspect. The 

 principle on which it is laid out, ought to be that of exhibiting a variety 

 of color and form so blended as to present one beautiful whole. In a 

 small flower-garden, viewed from the windows of a house, this effect is 

 best produced by borders laid sideways to each other, and to the win- 

 dows from which they are seen ; as by that position the colors show 

 themselves in one mass ; whereas, if placed endways to the windows of 

 the house, they divide the whole in appearance, and occasion a scarcity 

 of show. 



Without great neatness in the treatment of the spot devoted to flow 

 ers, much of the pleasing efi"ect which otherwise would be produced on 

 the mind is counteracted. Neatness consists in something more than 

 the mere weeding and raking of beds and borders, hoeing and sweeping 

 of alleys. It is perceptible even in the mode of tying up, trimming and 

 training plants — even in the style of suspending a collar or label round 

 the neck of a carnation. 



A little attention to these matters, at the beginning, induces a habit 

 of doing even the minutest things in the flower-garden with good taste, 

 and of avoiding any arrangement that may be unsightly. 



THE SHRUBBERY. — Shrubs follow so closely in order after flowers, that 

 we cannot refuse their assimilation in our pages ; indeed, so many of 



