The Garden Magazine 



Volume XXII 



JANUARY, 1916 



Number 6 



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IS THERE such a thing as an "average" garden — by which 

 we mean a garden in which everything goes along on an evenly 

 smooth course, with no extremes of conditions or of results? 

 Is it not a fact that in reality each single garden is a thing 

 apart and presents some special problem of its own to bother the 

 enthusiast? For of course, the owner is an enthusiast before a 

 garden comes into being. It is inevitable that writings of garden 

 craft and practice shall be either of the general average type or of 

 the peculiar and special. This is, at once, the joy and the bane of 

 nearly all garden writings, and gives the intelligent reader a certain 

 sense of excitement and satisfaction in deciding whether to apply 

 intact or to adjust to his own case the matter which he reads. Yet 

 another and no less self-gratifying thing is the often felt sense of 

 superiority which comes from the thought that after all he knows 

 more about the thing than does the one who has written. This 

 is, of course, largely true — as applied to his own environment. 



^k NOW, as a matter of fact, most ready-made garden plans do 

 \/y presuppose that the soil is always of the average type, because 

 though the actual average may never exist, it is, after all, the only 

 safe standard from which to start personal adjustments. Also it is 

 a fact that the plants (or seeds) usually offered by nurserymen (or 

 seedsmen) are of the kinds that grow well almost anywhere. It 

 follows, naturally, then, that when the exceptional condition is 

 encountered — a bed of pure clay, a bank of sand, or a damp, badly 

 drained corner where the sun never shines — the amateur, especially 

 if he be a beginner at the gentle art, is completely "at sea" so to 

 speak. Nothing grows, nothing fits; the teachers and mentors are 

 all wrong! But these different spots need attention; they must 

 be utilized as they are. It is not practical to change the soil; it 

 is possible to find some growing things that will be at home there; 

 the gardening ideals and methods must be changed from the 

 "average" to the "special." Sometimes it may be necessary to 

 completely modify the original scheme for the garden and in place 

 of certain popular garden aristocrats, we may have to content 

 ourselves with what, in the average garden, is a veritable weed. 

 And yet this is not "wild gardening," for these same weeds may be 

 utilized to attain carefully pre-arranged effects in any way that 

 may be desired, and they will be cultivated as much as, and in 

 fact are made part of, the actual garden. It is merely finding the 

 thing that fits the case and which gives the maximum of effect from 

 the minimum of effort. And is not that, after all, the ultimate meas- 

 ure of really skilful gardening? Is it not far more creditable to find 

 the plant that will thrive amazingly in a peculiar situation than to 

 achieve, at most, a partial victory over adverse conditions by just 

 keeping from death a miserable looking object that is protesting 

 against its environment? Or, at vast expense to veritably "change 

 the face of nature " for the sake of coddling such an exotic? 



The present time is not opportune for suggestions in detail — nor 

 indeed could the subject be adequately treated in a single article; 

 but the reader will find in the succeeding issues articles on in- 

 dividual problems with selections of appropriate plants for gardens 

 in a stagnant marsh, in pure sand, heavy clay, dry open wood, 

 stony sunny hillsides, cool ravines, under lawn trees, on a sun- 

 baked ledge, at the entrance to the city house, in the brook bed, etc. 



<& IT IS a misfortune that not only does our early education 

 •^^ train us to think, but also our later life and experience lead us 

 to continue to think, of our country in terms of artificial, arbitrary 

 divisions such as states and counties. Most of us, if we can visual- 

 ize the United States at all, think of it as a flat, parallelogram ic 

 expanse of different colored patches with a pinched up wrinkle of 

 mountains at either side, a cluster of blue lakes in an upper corner 

 and a tortuous, black river rather neatly separating the "fruitful 

 East" from the "arid West." We recall that politics, laws and 

 sentiments differ from one commonwealth to another, and in- 

 stinctively we try to make our principles and practices in gardening 

 and farming adapt themselves geographically to these same arti- 

 ficial sections. But it doesn't work, and it never will. 



Political and social boundaries mean nothing to Nature. Birds 

 and beasts, flowers, fruits, weeds, and all the other denizens of farm 

 and garden, whether hostile or friendly, distribute themselves and 

 thrive, not within areas marked out by man, but in conformity to 

 limitations of a higher, more potent series of rulings. 



Inotherwords gardenadviceand variety suggestions state by state 

 aren't "worth shucks." The important thing is to know what sort 

 of boundaries Nature has set for the different types and groups of 

 plant and animal life — and thanks to the experts of the U. S. Bio- 

 logical Survey, we have just that information available in graphic 

 form. The map of "life zones" reproduced on the next page will 

 serve to shed a ray of light on what really are "local" conditions. 



jk THOUGH "East is East and West is West," from a biological 

 ^^~ standpoint we might better concentrate on the differences be- 

 tween North and South. For it is obvious that conditions are 

 more nearly alike in Central Virginia and central South Dakota 

 than in Tennessee and Alabama. The tremendous importance of 

 altitude is shown in the recurrence of the rigorous Canadian con- 

 ditions on mountain heights even as far south as New Mexico and 

 North Carolina, and the appearance of the slightly milder Trans- 

 ition Zone along all the lesser elevations throughout many parts 

 of the more temperate Upper Austral area. 



Naturally these life and crop zones as they are termed are not 

 the only, nor even the supreme, factors in the determination of the 

 flora and fauna of a region. The annual rainfall is of tremendous 

 importance; the line of small circles crossing the map almost in 

 the centre indicates the approximate belt where arid and humid 

 America meet — and of course the vegetation of the two differ 

 considerably. Also the distribution of soil types has an immense 

 influence upon the agriculture of different sections, a subject to 

 which we hope to recur on another occasion. 



«. NEVERTHELESS, there is a lesson and some consolation 

 ^^ to be derived from this zone map. We hear so much about 

 "local conditions" and how they restrict our activities. And 

 after all one can almost retort in the language of the day 

 "Wha'dye mean — local conditions," for we in the Hudson Valley 

 find ourselves enjoying the same biologic conditions as those 

 of west central Arkansas. The happy dweller on the "Eastern 

 sho'" of Maryland can rejoice in the fact that practically all the 

 Southern states and fertile bits of California and Arizona have the 



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