THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



131 



Three Thousand Plants of Golden 

 Glow in Four Years at No Cost 



I WAS awarded first prize for the best-kept 

 grounds by the village improvement 

 society at Manchester, Mass. My lot is 

 45 x 114 feet, and about half of it is occupied 

 by my restaurant and dwelling. The lot is 

 enclosed bv a board fence six feet high, which 

 I cannot control. This fence is an annoyance 

 to me. I should much prefer a wire fence 

 that could be completely covered with vines. 

 To hide the fence as much as possible, I 



chose Rudbeckia Golden Glow. I could not 

 afford to buy enough plants to screen the 

 whole fence in one season, but in four years 

 I have succeeded in hiding the whole fence 

 without paying a cent for plants. Four 

 years ago a friend gave me about a peck of 

 roots, which, when divided and set a foot 

 apart, made a single row about ten or twelve 

 feet long. The second spring, I dug up all the 

 plants, divided them, and had a row fifty or 

 sixty feet long. The third season, I dug up 

 the plants during a January thaw, and got 

 remarkably good results by dividing them 

 at that unusual season. Some of the ground 

 was frozen and I put the plants in the sun- 

 light to thaw out. This gave me a row the 

 full length of the lot (114 feet), clear across 

 the back (forty-five feet) and along the other 

 side as far as the house. The fourth year I 

 doubled the whole border (now 220 feet long) 

 by making it two feet wide. Thus I esti- 

 mate that I have about three thousand 

 plants, all healthy, prolific and remarkably 

 uniform. I wonder if any other amateur 

 has propagated so large a stock from so 

 small a beginning in four years, and whether 

 such a record would be possible with any 

 other plant than the wonderful Golden 



Glow? I believe it is the most popular 

 hardy perennial introduced during the last 

 twenty-five years. What a fortune for some 

 one who could get it in other colors ! 



The fence is now hidden by a living wall of 

 green, and I have untold thousands of 

 flowers from August until frost. Nor do I 

 find it monotonous because it is all one kind 

 of plant. Ordinarily, the Golden Glow 

 grows about six feet high, but with me it 

 attains nine or ten feet. To keep it from 

 falling forward, I have invented a little 

 scheme for keeping the plants in place, which 

 is effective and practically invisible. Vertical 

 stakes six feet high, about an inch wide and 

 thick, and painted dark green, are placed 

 every ten feet in a row parallel with the fence 

 and about two and a half feet away from it. 

 These stakes carry a wire near the top, which 

 prevents the flowers from falling forward. 

 Every two feet I have a wire from fence to 

 running wire to keep them from sagging in 

 wind or rain storms. 



The other plants shown in the picture are 

 dahlias, Lavatera (an excellent pink and white 

 flower of the mallow family) and candvtuft. 

 J. S. Reed. 



Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. 



189. This yard has a six-foot board fence completely hidden by Rudbeckia Golden Glow, of which about three thousand plants were propagated at home in four 

 years from a pecK of roots. The necessary stakes and wires are practically invisible. The lot is 114 feet long 



