208 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



January, 1916 



execution, whether of house or grounds. It 

 takes money to carry out the work. It 

 continues to cost money to maintain the 

 place when constructed. Both these costs 

 must be kept in mind when the plan is 

 made. The cost of construction and main- 

 tenance bear little relation to one another. 

 An expensive place to build is frequently 

 the least difficult to maintain, and vice 

 versa. For instance, a drive made with 

 good pipe drains, gutters, thorough and deep 

 foundations, with the best bituminous 

 binders, will take very little attention to 

 keep in shape, while an ill-made dirt road 

 requires constant patching, crowning and 

 watering to be practicable. 



It is important not to start more than 

 can be done well. A single bed, well pre- 



' pared to grow plants is better than a dozen 

 poorly, or not at all, prepared. In the long 

 run the most economical way to do is to 

 get a plan of the whole place. With this, 

 complete as much as you please at any 

 one time. In this way mistakes are not 

 made which must be torn out, often at 

 considerable expense and done over. 



Lastly, don't let your enthusiasm run 

 away with you and start more than you 

 can afford to maintain or than will perma- 

 nently hold your interest. Maintenance 

 costs money and labor. Any one who 

 expects to do most of his own gardening 

 must remember that it exacts a good deal 

 of constant and careful work. Plants are 

 like any other pets. You can not feed 

 Fido to-day and let him starve over 



Sunday, when you are away at Cousin 

 Henry's. While the bad results of such 

 intermittent attention to your garden will 

 not be so quickly apparent to the neighbors 

 as Fido's scandalous neglect; they will none 

 the less show sooner or later. Women who 

 attend to their own gardens had better not 

 pay long visits or work on committees, 

 save for the Garden Club. 



[Editor' 's Note. — In subsequent articles Mr. Steele 

 will follow the subject of the reasonable develop- 

 ment of the Home Plan in its logical progress, 

 discussing the factors of environment and existing 

 conditions, the forms of gardens, how to make the 

 most of what you have to do with, what to plant 

 and how, etc.; also, what not to do and, in general, 

 will show how the new house may become a real 

 home without starting out on a scale too elaborate 

 to maintain to the end.] 



*.. ' ^:flM*n iC'?»^ 



■. ';.*•?? W*j$ 



ODDS AND ENDS 



FROM EVERYWHERE 



sssscygg-g 



Comfrey, A Healing Herb 



IN THE summer of 1915, I found a. new-old 

 garden plant in cultivation here in my home 

 town. It grew — fitly enough, if one consider folk 

 tales and the old lore of herb gardens — with Mari- 

 golds, Tansy, Rue, Chamomile, Wormwood, Mints, 

 Balm, Fennel, Alehoof, Rosemary, and pots of 

 Myrtle — in the front yard of a Lithuanian miner's 

 house. It was the Comfrey. It had been brought 

 twenty miles as a bit of root-cutting; and its parent 

 stock had been raised from seeds carefully fetched 

 by Lithuanian immigrants from the Niemen Valley 

 region, a district terribly familiar to us here of late 

 because of dispatches from the Russian war zone. 



Robinson's "English Flower Garden" speaks of 

 several forms of Comfrey as "bold but somewhat 

 coarse plants, suited for naturalizing in open sunny 

 places, since their foliage has a fine effect in masses. 



. . . Symphytum officinale effective in a gar- 

 den of hardy flowers, although generally seen only 

 in mixed collections of hardy variegated plants." 



. . To my friends in Pennsylvania, though, 

 who were nursing one fourfoot plant as a treasure 

 hardly to be again obtained from a lost old world 

 all ruined and swept bare by fire and sword, the fol- 

 iage of the specimen was its negligible part. The 

 heather-like pink flowers were prized in little bun- 

 ches, ringed with sprigs of Rue, for windowsill bou- 

 quets. Seed was being gathered carefully, to start 

 other neighborhood plantations. The big black 

 roots, ultimately, would be dug and used as our 

 mediaeval ancestors all used them — for "the breath- 

 ing and the heart." 



Russians and Lithuanians here, I learn, boil 

 these roots, fresh if possible, dried if fresh cannot be 

 had, add eggs to the water when partly done, and 

 eat eggs and roots in the liquor, with or without 

 boiled white potatoes; this to relieve the weakness 

 and oppression sometimes following very heavy labor 

 or lifting of great weights. Both of these people 

 here at the mines pride themselves on feats of 

 strength and endurance, and temporary prostration 

 from overstraining the heart is a well recognized 

 ailment. The older women keep in their houses 

 stock of "old country roots" of various sorts for 

 home treatment; and the black Comfrey is a most 

 prized simple with which to dose men and boys 

 who have overdone. So implicit is the belief in its 

 powers as a restorative that remarkable cures 

 usually follow its administration! 



Modern scepticism sent me to the Encyclopaedia, 

 and then to Britton and Brown's "Illustrated 

 Flora," (Vol. Ill, p. 67) where the Comfrey has 

 five or six centuries of pedigree as a healing herb to 

 its credit. One of the English folk-names of the 

 plant in this latter authority is Back-wort, or Knit- 

 back — eloquently suggestive, indeed, of strained 

 muscles! And when the exact dryness of the 

 "Illustrated Flora" condescends to give any botani- 

 cal specimen a human history or dooryard setting, 

 great indeed must be the mass of legendary au- 

 thority accumulated behind such mention! The 

 Comfrey is, in fact, a "confirma" of Gothic Latinity 

 — a setter-up plant — a pick-me-up — greatly es- 

 teemed by Gerard and his simplers as a restorative. 

 In England it was also an astringent for stopping 

 the bleeding of wounds, either bruised leaves or a 

 decoction of leaves and roots, being applied to 

 sword cuts; but taken internally, it was supposed 

 to increase the flow of blood from a wound. All over 

 northern Europe, at least up to the reign of Queen 

 Victoria, Comfrey was one of the medicinal plants 

 of peasant and villager; and credited with the 

 same properties as my Lithuanian and Russian 

 friends here in an alien new land ascribe to it to-day. 

 Strange, indeed, that an obscure plant should have 

 a continuing life and tradition, overseas, through 

 wars and ruin and the death of nations! 



Pennsylvania. E. S. Johnson. 



Success with January Sweet Peas in the South 



LAST winter, when there was the least activity in 

 gardens, I decided to grow Sweet Peas. Some 

 of my friends were so unkind as to say that Sweet 

 Peas could not be grown in the South by an inex- 

 perienced amateur; but I was determined to make 

 the attempt. Requests were sent to half a dozen 

 specialists for catalogues and literature pertaining 

 to.Sweet Peas and their culture, and after they were 

 received the real difficulty came — the selection of 

 varieties to plant. I had space in my garden for 

 only a few varieties, so after a time my list 

 was reduced to the following named varieties: 

 Angelina, early pink; Le Marquis, early blue; 

 Mont Blanc, early white; Countess Spencer, soft 

 pink; Elfrieda Pierson, huge, pale pink; Stirling 

 Stent, orange salmon; Irish Belle, lavender; King 

 Edward, dark scarlet; Mrs. Hugh Dickson, apricot 

 cream; King White, pure white. 



From the time that the orders were forwarded to 



the time that the seeds arrived, I was busy prepar- 

 ing the ground to receive them, following the in- 

 structions given by the seedsmen so far as possible, 

 enriching and deepening every foot of the soil to be 

 used. About January 25th the seeds came, and 

 were immediately planted along a wire netting 

 fence that had been stretched along the prepared 

 ground. In about two weeks after planting, the 

 tiny sprout-like shoots began to appear, and by the 

 end of February they were given their first cultiva- 

 tion. After this the ground was regularly stirred,, 

 and kept loose and free from weeds at all times. 

 By April, the plants of the early type were in fine 

 bloom. 



One day, during the latter part of April, I noticed 

 a big, fat bunch of buds pushing out from one of the 

 tall Spencer vines. From that time onward, my 

 attention was almost wholly given to the Spencers, 

 and soon they burst into a wealth of bloom so 

 fragrant as to scent the entire garden. No less 

 beautiful were the delicate blossoms of Irish Belle 

 and the extraordinary blooms of King White, Stir- 

 ling Stent, though not so large as the others of its 

 type, was a favorite because of the uniqueness of 

 its color. 



The vines were cultivated and watered through- 

 out the summer whenever they showed signs of 

 needing it, and they continued to flower until after 

 the first light frosts in November. 



Mississippi Btjford Reid. 



Is the Beech Lightning Immune? 



THERE is an old saying that a Beech tree is 

 never struck by lightning. Has any scientist 

 ever attempted to explain or disprove this theory? 



We had an interesting experience with a Beech 

 tree this past summer and as it was on our own 

 lawn and under close observation daily we know 

 that the facts are correct. 



During a severe thunder storm about the middle 

 of June a very heavy flash of lightning struck and 

 badly shattered a long grape trellis bordering the 

 lawn. About 15 feet distant was standing a splen- 

 did specimen of weeping Beech — Fagus sylvatica 

 var. pendula. The trunk was absolutely free from 

 scratches or marks of any kind and apparently 

 the tree was not injured in the least. But at the 

 verj tip-top was a small bunch of scorched leaves, 

 and the extreme ends of the low-drooping branches 

 — touching the earth in places — were withered and 



