The house completed. It stood on the ground with a strange appearance of 

 not having a proper right there 



But four years later, when the shrubs around it had become established, it 

 had all the appearance of a cosy home 



What Planting About a House Can Do -By s. h. Bullock 



Pennsyl- 



"\X7HEN I look back and make a mental 

 " comparison between things as they 

 were and things as they are to-day, I am 

 filled with wonder that more people do 

 not attempt a little something in improv- 

 ing the surroundings of their new homes. 

 The nurserymen make it so easy for us, 

 too, offering assortments of desirable shrubs 

 which one can plant to fit any special 

 place or you can by the aid of their cat- 

 alogues make your own special selections 

 from among those things that catch the 

 fancy. The accompanying pictures show 

 a striking comparison of results in our 

 own place. How bare and uninviting is 

 the plain masonry! 



When we moved to the country four 

 years ago we bought a house on an acre of 

 ground in one of the suburbs of Philadel- 

 phia. The house was not finished when 

 we got possession and the ground was 

 simply part of a field. 



It was especially interesting as we could 

 only do a little at a time and each thing 

 we planted we felt the need of before we 

 put it in the ground, so notwithstanding 

 the fact that we lost the usual percentage 

 of trees and shrubs, I do 

 not think we made any 

 mistakes as far as locating 

 them went. 



The first thing we did 

 after planting a hedge 

 around three sides of the 

 place and a row of sugar 

 maples across the front, 

 was to tie down the house, 

 as the saying goes. This 

 I cannot sufficiently em- 

 phasize ; it was the sugges- 

 tion of a friend who had 

 preceded us in the pilgrim- 

 age countryward about 

 four years. At her sugges- 

 tion I bought ten dollars' 

 worth of shrubs of differ- 

 ent varieties and planted 



them one cold November day in beds 

 around the house, leaving just a foot of sod 

 between the stone wall and the bed to 

 prevent the mud splashing on the stone in 

 heavy rains. Now the house nestles in 

 shrubbery from April to November with a 

 succession of bloom on the various kinds. 



I feel as if I should not speak as one hav- 

 ing authority, as, after all, how little one 

 can learn in four years, but in my opinion 

 there are just a few ways of planting. I 

 am now referring to a small place. First 

 tie down the house by planting around it 

 and secondly plant around the boundaries 

 and screen everything unsightly. Avoid 

 beds in the middle of your lawn. The 

 only thing needed to break the sweep is 

 an occasional evergreen or specimen tree. 

 The character of the border planting can 

 be according to your individual taste — per- 

 ennials with the hedge as a background, or 

 a shrub border with perennials in front. 

 After developing your place to the utmost, 

 a hardy garden can be started in the rear, 

 if the garden mania still continues ; but first 

 of all, plant around the house. 



In planting around the base of our house, 



The front piazza was set off by the free use of flowering vines 

 307 



we used white althea, white, pink and 

 variegated weigelas, Forsythia Fortunei, 

 and a couple of large Rhus Cotinus, which 

 grows to such enormous proportions that 

 it is wise to plant it at the ends or corners 

 where it will have ample room to spread. 

 In front of these taller shrubs we planted 

 Spiraea Van Houttei, and an occasional 

 Hydrangea paniculata, var., grandiflora r 

 with Berberis Thunbergi and a few dwarf 

 Deutzia gracilis on the front, making the 

 whole graduate to the edge of the bed, 

 along which we planted nasturtiums. 



The same idea was carried out all the 

 way along the side of the house to the 

 kitchen window, a mock orange, Japanese 

 snowball and Rosa rugosa being added at 

 intervals so that there would be a con- 

 tinuation of bloom all summer. 



Ten dollars covered the cost of those 

 used in front and at the sides of the 

 porch, and now it keeps us busy cutting 

 them back so they will not look rank and 

 untidy. This should be done immediately 

 after the blooming period of each shrub. 

 On each side of our place we have an irreg- 

 ular border about a foot and a half away 

 from the hedge. On the 

 back line of this bed are 

 a few shrubs for a back- 

 ground, and in front of 

 these are peonies, Japan- 

 ese and German iris, sweet 

 William, and various bulbs 

 (such as Narcissus poeti- 

 cus and daffodils), with an 

 occasional clump of for- 

 get-me-not and primroses. 

 At first our borders had 

 larkspur, phlox, coreopsis, 

 hollyhocks, and rudbeck- 

 ias in addition to those 

 already mentioned, but as 

 the plants grew I moved 

 these last out of the bor- 

 der into the hardy garden 

 in the rear of my house. 



