276 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



January, 1910 



of pussy willow, a fine honey locust, a maple, 

 a catalpa speciosa, a wild cherry, a tulip 

 poplar, and a horse chestnut (buckeye), all 

 of which, except the first, I dug up, carried 

 home, and planted myself in much the same 

 manner as I handled the dogwood. The 

 horse chestnut I found by a roadside, and 

 dug it up with a stick. 



I have been out for plants early in the 

 morning, on Saturday afternoons, and often 

 in the evening. A clump of the tall meadow 

 rue was planted by the aid of a lamp! I had 

 to avail myself of every possible moment, and 

 some strange moments there were, to be sure. 



My garden also has a small cedar, golden- 

 rods, a number of wild asters, a large clump 

 of boneset, some wood ferns, several dif- 

 ferent kinds of milkweed, including a clump 

 of the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuber osa), 

 some hawk-weed, several patches of wild 

 geranium, blood-root, and wood violets, some 

 iron-weed, a fine specimen of the swamp 

 rose mallow, ' several fine chicory plants, 

 a wild azalea, an elder bush, some bouncing- 

 bet, a fine clump of Joe-pye weed, some 

 Lilium superbum, and star-of-Bethlehem; 

 mixed in with all these are money-wort, 

 Jack-in-the-pulpit, may-apples, tall true 

 Solomon's seal, poke-weed, spikenard and 

 false Solomon's seal, with mint and spear- 

 mint to add pungency. All of the above I 

 obtained myself from places nearby, none 

 of them over a day's travel. 



On my trips I took a large, round, rattan 

 basket, some soft twine, a number of news- 

 papers, and a strong trowel made of an old 

 army trenching bayonet; it was long and 

 broad, ended in a fairly sharp point, had 

 one sharp edge, and a heavy centre rib, 

 making it very strong and serviceable. 

 Before I learned the worth of this trowel I 

 had fooled with many poorer, weaker ones. 

 When I came upon a plant that was a good 

 specimen, it was dug up, the roots wrapped 

 carefully in a piece of newspaper, and put 

 in the basket. I made it a rule to plant 

 what I obtained as soon as I got home, which 

 was sometimes late — and sometimes quite 

 early, in those instances when I started 

 shortly after sunrise. 



If the plants were put in during the heat 

 of the day, they were shaded a few days, 

 and the need for it enabled me to work out 

 a collapsible frame, which 'can be placed 

 over the newly set plant and covered with 

 bagging or paper. 



What I have said regarding the plan of 

 work with regard to one plant is true of 

 them all. I aimed to get the plants of the 

 different seasons, beginning with the blood- 

 root and hepatica, and ending with the wild 

 asters and golden-rods. Further, I aimed 

 to keep the tall plants back, and the lower 

 ones front, all arranged to form an irregular 

 border-line as indicated in the illustrated 

 ground plan. 



At each corner of the back end of the 

 garden were two posts of usual height and 

 style; these I replaced with two sixteen-foot 

 natural cedar posts and planted Clematis 

 paniculata at their base. 



To my wild flowers I added some regular 

 hardy plants obtained from the nurseries; 

 several peonies, altheas, a lilac bush, a 

 mallow, some rudbeckia, also iris, several 

 hardy phlox, and a kudzu vine that proved 

 its reputation for rapid growing. This kudzu 

 is trained over a sort of framework made of 

 cedar posts and acts as a screen over and 

 around the sand pile maintained for the 

 children. As a screen to the back porch 

 I planted the cinnamon vine, with sweet peas 

 in front of it. A hedge plant at one corner, 

 and a hydrangea at another corner help to 

 hide the gate between the sand pile and the 

 porch. 



A few of the wild flowers I brought did 

 not take kindly to their new home, and 

 gradually died, or did not come up the next 

 year. One of these was the Cypripedium 

 acaule. Some plants that did get started 

 threatened to run us out of the garden, as 

 for instance the Virginia day flower. 



Often plants that were laboriously obtained 

 and carefully planted, had to be taken out 

 as being too large or too unwieldy. Fre- 

 quently small plants had to be taken up 

 and put out front, or their location changed, 

 and so I constantly plan and labor. 



Really Efficient Pruning Tools -By J. Lukens Kayan, 



Penn- 

 sylvania 



[Editor's Note. — The present article is in continuation of the series which deals with gardening tools for special purposes, telling 

 the reader how to select the tools that will fully serve his purpose, and pointing out why special appliances are fitted to special cases. The 

 one common error of most beginners in gardening is to buy tools that are light and inefficient, simply because they are cheap. It is a 

 false economy, and Mr. Kayan' s articles are designed to help the reader to decide on what appliances he really needs.] 



/^\F ALL the tools used in and about the 



^S garden, probably the average person 

 has less appreciation of the fitness of the 

 various pruning tools than of any others. 

 This is due, perhaps, chiefly to the fact that 

 the art of pruning is itself very little under- 

 stood, and therefore a proper appreciation 

 of the appliances cannot be reached. I 

 believe that inasmuch as the tools are very 

 largely an outgrowth of the circumstances 

 and are designed to fit specific uses, a little 

 study from the tool to its use would result 

 actually in more intelligent care and pruning 

 of trees and shrubs. The one great danger 

 in pruning is a tendency to allow the growth 

 to become too large before it is removed. 

 The plain, ordinary pruning knife, used 



High-grade pruning shears, nine inches. Will cut 

 anything under one inch in diameter 



intelligently, all through the season, will 

 usually obviate the necessity of using any 

 of the larger tools. But it takes skilled 

 knowledge to realize what the ultimate 

 development of a tree or shrub will be, and 

 therefore reliance must be had on the larger, 

 more powerful tools for remedying defects 

 later on. This is true even with competent 

 horticulturists, and the amateur gardener 

 need not feel unduly disturbed over the fact 

 that his trees, at times, seem to be running 

 out of control. In the present article the 

 art of pruning cannot be discussed — it is 

 a subject all to itself. I am concerned only 

 with the intelligent selection of the proper 

 tools and getting the greatest efficiency for 

 the money expended. 



The one essential in all pruning work that 

 must always be insisted on is that the surface 

 of the cut, whether it be a one-eighth twig 

 or a large branch, must be clean and smooth, 

 not ragged and rough. Nature soon heals 

 a clean-cut wound; a rough, ragged one 

 heals slowly, causing small branches to die 

 back to the next bud; in large ones decay 

 often starts and works down into the trunk 

 of the tree, causing permanent injury and 

 eventually killing it. 



To secure clean, smooth cuts requires 

 sharp tools; none but first quality ones can 

 be kept in such condition. Good tools are 

 more important here than in any other 

 branch of horticulture. In cultivating, extra 

 labor or energy may be expended to com- 

 pensate for the use of an inferior tool; but 

 in pruning none but first class tools will 

 continue to produce the proper results and 

 no amount of labor or care expended in their 

 use will make poor pruning tools do first class 

 work. In the selection of any tool, price is 

 generally a good guide as to quality, which 



Bill-hook and slashing-knife. Useful for rough 

 clearing and where there is much hedging 



