Putting the Garden tO Sleep — By Sherman R. Duffy, ffi 



SOME EXPERIENCES WITH PLANTS THAT WERE KILLED BY THAT EXCESS OF MISPLACED 

 ZEAL WHICH IS NOT KINDNESS — WHY SOME "HARDY" PLANTS ARE MADE TO DIE IN WINTER 



THE happy transition in gardening ideals 

 from tender to hardier plants has 

 opened up the whole problem of putting 

 a garden to bed so it will not be sent to sleep 

 that knows no waking. Formerly, before the 

 possibilities of hardy gardening were so well 

 illuminated by The Garden Magazine, 

 Country Life in A m eric a and a few horticul- 

 tural publications, the fall campaign con- 

 sisted of cluttering up all the windows with 

 geraniums which grew lank and leggy, 

 anaemic coleus, and such material which 

 graced circular and oval patches in the 

 geometrical centre of the front door yard. 

 Fall work in the garden was represented by a 

 lot of back-breaking digging. The growth 

 of gardening which relegates these showy 

 but tender subjects to a minor position in 

 favor of the hardier ones is a good one and 

 the beauty of it all is that it forces a closer 

 study of the plants themselves, their habits 

 of growth and their winter requirement. 



The mistakes which myself and others 

 have made in covering the crowns of per- 

 ennials with such a heavy mulch of barn- 

 yard manure that they rotted led to a doubt 

 of the veracity of the firms who sold plants 

 and seeds. When a plant is advertised as 

 absolutely hardy and then dies the first 

 winter, the natural inference is that it isn't 

 hardy. But protests to florists and seeds- 

 men have had their reward. 



The word "hardy" has been a much 

 abused one. Once when I protested to a 

 Chicago seedsman about some plants that 

 were advertised in his catalogue as hardy and 

 hadn't proved hardy for me, he asked me 

 what I had done to them. I told him I had 

 given them a good mulch of manure late 

 in November and even then they had died. 

 He looked at me pityingly and said, "It's 

 hardy if you don't kill it." 



Some things are hardy if only given a 

 chance. Others are hardy with half a 

 chance; and some few are hardy with no 

 chance at all. 



The one ineradicable idea in this part of 

 the country (among those who till the soil) 

 is that manure is the alpha and omega, the 

 start and the finish and all the intermediate 

 distance in gardening. The idea that un- 

 limited manure isn't good for everything 

 suggests imbecility. Hence many trials 

 and tribulations in the fall of the year in 

 putting my garden to bed through mis- 

 guided but well me?nt assistance and a 

 distrust of my intelligence and gardening 

 sanity when the information is given out 

 that certain portions of my garden must 

 not be piled high with manure or covering 

 of any kind. 



While manure is beyond cavil the start 

 it has as unquestionably been the finish 

 of a great many of my prized gardening 

 subjects. 



In these cold, sad, gray days of November 



there is a lot of work to be done in the 

 garden, and work that must be done right or 

 else it had better be left undone. Were I 

 a predatory plutocrat or even a corporal of 

 finance, putting the garden to bed would be 

 no trouble at all for I should have ranges of 

 coldframes, and gardeners to clap my plants 

 into them, slap on the sash, and then next 

 spring there is the garden. But coldframes 

 cost real money ; they take up a lot of room 

 in a yard which is in constant use and which 

 allows only a small corner for a frame, so the 

 garden must be sent into winter quarters 

 as best it may with the least expense. 



If coldframes are expensive, soap boxes 

 are not, and I have raised as fine gloxinia 

 flowered foxgloves and Canterbury bells as 

 ever grew in a coldframe and have even 

 wintered wallflowers safely under the pro- 

 tection of the inartistic but effective soap 

 box. 



With the firm belief prevalent that every- 

 thing must be covered with manure, it 

 becomes necessary for me to get such things 

 as foxgloves and perennials or biennials 

 with evergreen crowns covered to protect 

 them from the deluge from the barnyard 

 which is sure to come when I am away from 

 the scene of activity. It isn't so very long 

 ago that I awoke to the error of my way in 

 mulching everything a foot deep each fall. 

 It was a labor conducted with considerable 

 effort and with direful results. 



Foxgloves to me were the puzzle of the 

 garden for some time. I knew they were 

 hardy. Everybody told me they were; but 

 I would raise a fine crop of seedlings and 

 mulch them with a good coating of manure 

 in the late fall and in the spring maybe 

 one or two came through, but not more. 

 A section of a board walk was accidentally 

 thrown over one corner of my foxglove bed 

 a few winters ago. In spring I found 

 underneath it a fine crop of foxgloves, hardly 

 a leaf gone. It was the solution and that 

 started my soap box collection. Boxes 

 go over foxgloves, canterbury bells and 

 other evergreen perennials — and they grow. 

 The annual cleaning of the barnyard backed 

 by the faith that moves mountains of manure 

 may descend upon my collection of boxes but 

 it cannot do any harm, for the plants are kept 

 dry and have ventilation and with this care 

 they are hardy. 



A foxglove is not hardy in this climate — 

 not reliably hardy, at least, when left without 

 protection, or when heavily mulched. There 

 are a lot of alleged hardy subjects that 

 are not hardy unless properly approached. 

 They are hardy if not smothered or drowned. 

 Wallflowers will survive reasonably if well 

 planted high and dry and covered. 



I used oak leaves last fall on bulb beds and 



on a patch of foxgloves. There seems to be 



a peculiarly warm quality to these leaves, for 



daffodils came up through the leaves even 



222 



faster and with a more lanky growth of leaves 

 than they have through manure, when despite 

 threats, prayers and entreaties, the bulb 

 beds got their cover from the barnyard. 



It is interesting to put some new subject 

 to bed for the winter. Last year I tried 

 some of the alleged hardy gladiolus. They 

 were planted close to the wall on the south 

 side of the house and given two feet of 

 manure; a few survived, but did not bloom. 



With perennials that die to the ground and 

 disappear — such as larkspurs and colum- 

 bines — the manure mulch is fine but what 

 a slaughter undue mulching has caused 

 among my posies ! In northern Illinois where 

 the winter may be open one week and 

 closed down below zero the next, conditions 

 are trying for all except the absolute ironclads 

 among the hardy posies. 



Sometimes some of my most admired 

 beds will come through magnificently with 

 good mulch and other times they won't. 

 Snapdragons are peculiar propositions to 

 me. Some years they will winter beautifully 

 when well covered with a mulch of manure 

 put on after the ground freezes. Other 

 seasons they will absolutely perish so they 

 are put to bed with hopes only. 



The one feature of sending my garden into 

 winter quarters that is still a puzzle to me 

 is what to do with those plants which insist 

 on growing when they ought to be resting. 

 It took some time to make me believe that 

 the big green crowns of candidum lilies 

 wouldn't be seriously hurt by cold weather. 

 Spanish iris spindle up through any kind of 

 mulch at most unseasonable times; I don't 

 give them any protection now and think 

 they do better. 



My one 6x6 coldframe is the spare bed. 

 In it are primroses and double wallflowers. 

 with a few early bulbs. It is a new acquisi- 

 tion and has yet to be experimented with. 

 Primroses I have everywhere and they are 

 as mean as a baby about going to bed prop- 

 erly. They always come pushing through 

 any sort of a mulch with weakened stems 

 if mulched and if not protected the vagrant 

 chickens get green winter food much too rich 

 for their blood or for the good of their giz- 

 zards. 



The proper style of fall and winter gar- 

 menting for a border seems to me to be a 

 subject requiring a finer knowledge of the 

 nature of the plants than their culture 

 during the growing months. At any rate 

 I know that improper covering has cost 

 me dear and that it takes some little study 

 now to give everything just the right amount 

 of protection, not too much nor yet too little. 

 The idea that plants are protected to keep 

 them cold instead of keeping them warm 

 was a brand new one when first presented, 

 the old idea that protection was for the pur- 

 pose of keeping them warm being at first 

 glance the natural impression. 



