Permanent Materials for Your Garden— By wilhelm Miller, ? 



York 



HOW TO SAVE MONEY NOW AND ALWAYS, AND HOW TO MAKE YOUR HOME 

 GROUNDS LOOK BETTER EVERY YEAR FOR THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS 



PART I.— HOW TO PLAN YOUR HOME GROUNDS 



IF YOU want to make The Garden 

 Magazine worth $100 or more to you 

 this year, compare this article with your 

 home grounds and see if you cannot do 

 two things: 



i. Save money every year in the care 

 of your place by substituting permanent 

 for short-lived material. 



2. Make your place more comfortable 

 and beautiful every year for the next 

 hundred years without worry or extrava- 

 gance. 



Here is an easy way for you to accom- 

 plish both objects. Hitherto there has 

 never been an easy way by which anybody 

 could find out what he really wanted and 

 what he didn't. I do not say this way 

 is perfect. But all methods must em- 

 body the same principle, viz., to help you 

 analyze your own needs. No one else can 

 dictate what you need. Ready made 

 plans are no good. After you know what 

 you want nothing could be more con- 

 venient than the nursery catalogue. The 

 method here proposed supplements the 

 nursery catalogue because it helps you 

 discover what you want. And what you 

 want to know is which plants are the best 

 for each particular purpose. 



TRUE AND EALSE ECONOMY 



The wrong way to plan a place is to 

 draw up a list of the plants you like best, or 

 employ an architect or jobbing gardener. 

 The right way is to employ the best land- 

 scape gardener you can get, or if you 

 think you cannot afford that, then study 

 the subject and draw a plan to scale. 

 The first cost of your place may be more 

 if you employ a designer, but you will 

 save years of waiting and the cost of 

 ripping up your whole place and rede- 

 signing it five years from now, 

 or whenever you learn better. 



The wrong way to plant a 

 place is to use too much short- 

 lived material, such as bed- 

 ding plants, annuals, poplars, 



privet hedges and other "quick growers." 

 The right way is to plant long-lived mate- 

 rial, like perennial flowers, oaks, and hedges 

 of Japanese barberry. The cost of main- 

 tenance will be less and your place will 

 be more dignified and beautiful every year 

 as long as you and your children live. 



It is false economy to buy the cheapest 

 nursery stock and send your list to half 

 a dozen nurserymen in competition. 



It is true economy to employ a first-class 

 designer to help you to decide on your 

 material and to select the sizes and 

 quantities to be used. 



WHAT YOU NEED TOR COMPORT 



Consider use first — then beauty. 



Do you want fruit? The best way to 

 keep out thieves is to have a high wall 

 around your garden. Next best is a fence. 

 A hedge robs the garden. You can't train 

 fruits on wires a foot away from the wall. 

 Plant small fruits and dwarfs only. 



Do you want vegetables? The best way 

 to have fresh vegetables the year round is 

 to have a greenhouse. Next best is to 

 have some hotbeds and coldframes. With- 

 out these you can make your garden bear 

 a fortnight earlier in spring and two months 

 later by having a windbreak on the north 

 and west sides, e. g. a wall, fence, or hem- 

 lock hedge. 



Do you want to hide unsightly objects? 

 Evergreen plants are better than de- 

 ciduous. Will large cedars do it now? 

 Japanese ivy covers the most wall space. 

 Poplars are the worst solution. 



Do you want privacy? Let passersby 

 see your front yard, if you like, but sur- 

 round the rest of your place with trees 

 and tall shrubs. 



Do you want cut flowers? Then don't 



have formal flower beds. Have informal 

 borders of shrubs and perennials. Grow 

 a row of your favorite cut flower in the 

 vegetable garden. 



GET YEAR-ROUND BEAUTY 



Most places are bleak and ugly five- 

 twelfths of the year — while the leaves 

 are off. Don't you want to make your 

 place comfortable and beautiful every day 

 of the year? First, make a list of the 

 months and provide three main attrac- 

 tions for each month. 



Second, ward off the winter winds. Save 

 coal. Provide a winter playground. Per- 

 haps a hemlock hedge is necessary. Per- 

 haps only a clump of red cedars, edged 

 with young hemlocks. 



Third, plant cheerful evergreens — not 

 gloomy ones. Plant white spruce instead 

 of Norway, concolor fir instead of European 

 silver fir, red pine instead of Scotch and 

 Austrian. Quick-growing evergreens soon 

 get shabby. 



Fourth, plant shrubs with berries that 

 are attractive all winter, especially those 

 with red berries, since red is the cheeriest 

 color against the snow. Plant common 

 and Japanese barberry, high bush cran- 

 berry, multiflora rose, Regel's privet, 

 white fringe, Viburnum Sargenti. 



Fifth, plant shrubs with brightly colored 

 twigs. They are full of warmth and color 

 as soon as the leaves drop off and are 

 brilliant every sunny day until April. 

 Plant plenty of Siberian dogwood, silky 

 dogwood, salmon and yellow willow, green 

 twigged forsythia and kerria. 



HAVE PERMANENT BOUNDARIES 



As soon as you have drawn a diagram 

 of your property to scale, walk clear around 

 the boundary lines studying 

 these big items: 



First, locate the unsightly 

 objects outside your property 

 which you wish to hide. The 

 permanent way to do this is to 



Example of a permanent specimen Example of year-round beauty near the house. Mugho pine, ground hemlock. Example of a permanent flower — ori- 

 tree for the lawn — hemlock and Japanese yew are more permanent than retinisporas ental poppy. Not resown every year 



154 



