Gardening Unashamed 



FRANCES DUNCAN 



Changes Brought About by the War — New Dignity in Cultivating the Soil and Pride in Home Grown Vegetables — The New Style 

 in Flower Garden and Shrubbery with Return of the Fence and Hedge — Revival of the Thrifty Garden 



IT IS a blessed fact that the war is over, 

 but another blessed fact is that the war- 

 stimulated gardening has come to stay. 

 Perhaps nothing less than the exigency 

 of war would have shocked us into gardening 

 in earnest, but however that may be, the thing 

 has happened, and the fact that the war is over 

 will increase rather than lessen the garden 

 enthusiasm. 



Everywhere, all over our country, the American 

 housewife and householder, suburbanite, com- 

 muter, folk of small towns, possessors of city 

 back-yards or vacant-lot farmers — all these 

 have learned the value of the small home-garden, 

 its definite help in lowering the cost of living, 

 the delights of it, the happiness of working in it, 

 and all have had a glimpse of its 

 immense possibilities. Not only 

 have they learned these things, but 

 they have learned them by heart. 

 After last summer's experience of 

 the deliciousness and convenience 

 of home-grown produce, no house- 

 wife will willingly go back to the 

 old abject dependence on the green- 

 grocer and the canning factory. 

 Many a commuting husband dis- 

 covered the converse of John Gil- 

 pin's findings to be true, and was 

 o'erjoyed to find that his wife, 

 while bent on frugality had in fact 

 afforded all the household much 

 pleasure. Many a man last sum- 

 mer fared better at his own table 

 than ever he had fared before, and 

 learned how delicious corn could be 

 straight from the garden to the 

 kitchen. No longer does the kitchen 

 garden blush unseen carefully 

 camouflaged by shrubbery lest its 

 homely presence be manifest — on 

 the contrary, it doesn't blush at 

 all, it has become the pride of the 

 whole household and in fact, in all 

 of our suburbs all the blushing done 

 was by those housewives who did 

 not engage in kitchen gardening. 



Besides this awakening of the 

 householder, thousands of our sol- 

 diers, returned from the camps, will 

 be beating their swords into plow- 

 shares — literally as well as figura- 

 tively — because whatever was the 

 profession which was theirs when 

 they entered camp, they will have 

 become gardeners also, having had 

 some practical experience in the 

 craft and gained beside a keen 

 sense of the bearing of the home 

 garden on the nation's food supply. 

 Invalided soldiers will take to home 

 gardening as a recreation and a 

 means of recovery of health. 



This revival in gardening which we» 

 have witnessed the last summer is not a revival in 

 the sense of a renaissance in the craft, a new bud- 

 ding forth of dormant interest, not at all ! It is an 

 old-fashioned revival, more of the Billy Sunday 

 order, — a very epidemic of garden enthusiasm, 

 involving the going a-gardening in person of 

 everyone who caught the fever — and almost 

 everyone did catch the fever. The result is 

 like to be a complete change in complexion of 

 our suburbs and small towns. 

 * * * 



The change in the large estates will not be so 

 marked. These have always had excellent 

 gardens, managed by competent men; the change 

 here will be that the owners will take a more 

 vital and intelligent interest in their gardens, 

 do more of the work themselves, be keen in 



furthering the garden enterprise in their com- 

 munity, and busy themselves fostering home 

 markets, and in promoting vacant lot and school 

 gardening. 



Our great garden revival is among the home- 

 staying householders, among the folk who rented 

 or begged or borrowed a bit of land and made 

 their first garden thereon — among these the 

 garden revival has been sweeping and striking, 

 and, as I said, bids fair to alter completely the 

 aspect of our suburbs, to make over the wilder- 

 nesses of our city back yards into a rose-like 



blossoming and a Dorcas-like usefulness. 



* * * 



Before the war, the small, thriftily managed 

 garden, where every inch of space was utilized 



Somehow the half-open gate breathes a welcome that is almost irresistible — perhaps because it so 

 decidedly seems to counteract the exclusiveness of the fence 



to the best advantage, the little garden, planned 

 and loved and worked in by the owner, or tenant 

 of the place himself — this was comparatively 

 rare in our country. It was met with every- 

 where on the Continent and in the English 

 countryside, but when present in this country, 

 it was usually the work of some foreign-born 

 citizen, not of a son or daughter of Uncle Sam. 

 With us, the place, larger or smaller was planted — 

 either by a landscape man, or by the owner with 

 what skill he could command — and then every 

 spring furbished up a bit, put in order, and 

 necessary work done. The idea of the garden 

 as a definitely useful part of the establishment, 

 the joy of the cook, the sustainment of the 

 kitchen larder — this idea was absent. Now 

 however, it has taken root. 



Yet this type of gardening was common enough 

 in the early days. From no less a person than 

 George Washington down, intelligent interest 

 in agriculture was held the proper study of man- 

 kind — especially of mankind with country hold- 

 ings. 



City and country gardens alike were planted 

 with the idea of affording comforts and rich- 

 nesses for the table. Some of the early 

 Philadelphia gardens are spoken of by garden- 

 less contemporaries as so well stocked with fruit 

 and luscious vegetables that a glimpse through 

 the palings would make the mouth of the passer- 

 by to water! 



It is that type of garden whose return we shall 

 be privileged to witness. 



* * * 



HTHERE will be plenty of friendly 

 -*- rivalry among our newly-fledged 

 gardeners for the first lettuce and 

 radish, and a lively hope for the 

 first melons. No first year gar- 

 dener of last summer's crop but 

 observed the tremendous advantage 

 of the "head start" given plants 

 by the use of frames, therefore 

 the first outward and visible sign 

 of our garden revival will be a great 

 increase among town and country 

 householders and suburbanites in 

 the use of garden-glass. Whether 

 coldframe or hotbed, pony-glass or 

 tiny or full sized greenhouse, or the 

 bell-glass of the Belgian gardeners 

 — glass in some form will become an 

 essential part of the garden equip- 

 ment. 



Beside this, the smaller his place, 

 the more the gardener will desire 

 the aid of glass. The home gardener 

 is not usually a commercial gar- 

 dener. A "bumper crop" is of little 

 use to him compared with the con- 

 venience and joy of produce from 

 his garden at a time when, without 

 the aid of glass, he would be gar- 

 denless, the pride of having his own 

 when in the market prices are sky 

 high. Two or three frames are of 

 more actual value to the small place 

 gardener than many an extra hun- 

 dred feet of land. They add at 

 least four months to his garden's 

 season— two at the beginning and 

 two at the end — and the cost of 

 maintenance is slight in compari- 

 son to the return in produce. Many 

 a gardener who last year grew patri- 

 otic pQtatoes and other field crops 

 on his small holdings, will this year 

 feel that he may safely leave those 

 to the farmer who has more land and 

 himself, more profitably, get frames 

 or perhaps a tiny greenhouse and ap- 

 ply himself to what one might call "de luxe" gar- 

 dening; that is raising plants which require special 

 care, but little space. The amateur gardener, espe- 

 cially if a woman, is likely to be more blessed 

 with brains than brawn, and the management of 

 frames is easy and pleasant and the returns 

 large, compared with the labor of hoeing onions 

 or potatoes, which next season will probably be 



plentiful enough. 



# * * 



Besides seeing the home-gardener blossom 

 into a skilled worker with garden glass, this year 

 will undoubtedly see a marked increase in the 

 planting of fruit trees, fruiting bushes, berry- 

 vines, and grapes. The enthusiasm with which 

 the American housewife of to-day has gone 

 a-canning and drying and preserving, will not 



