78 AMERICAN HOMES 
Love-in-a-Mist 
his time in discoursing “Of Gardens.” For my own part, 
I can dismiss the matter of Noman’s garden from my mind 
as though he were a purveyor of dried herbs, being, never- 
theless, charitable enough to wish him well. 
In place of his company, I love to sit out under the trees 
of Everyman’s garden. Now and then a whiffet of clover- 
fragrance, of perfume from the clover fields beyond, cuts 
keenly to our retreat, and the master of the garden shakes 
his head laughingly and gives warning that his flower- 
children will be jealous. So they are; the next fluttering of 
leaves is turned by zephyrs scented with the subtle incense 
of the Columbine, the Honeysuckle or the strange, sweet 
breath of the Dahlia. Then I tell the master of this garden 
all the hopes and fears I hold 
for my own. For two sea- 
sons now, I tell him, I have 
been striving to rear my 
treasured plants and bring 
them to maturity, that they 
may frame the garden of my 
dreams. He leads me to an 
old back porch screened with 
Honeysuckle, Clematis, and 
stringed Morning - Glories. 
“Flere,” he tells me, “I keep 
the diary of my garden.” I 
look over his shoulder and 
find that for many years he 
has jotted down with loving 
care all sorts of things every- 
one should know about his 
garden. Some of the things 
I find written in these bulky 
notebooks are much the same 
as the things the master of 
Noman’s garden begrudg- 
ingly dispensed when I 
pressed him for information. 
How differently it is with the 
master of Everyman’s gar- 
den. Eagerly I begin to 
compare notes, first turning 
to his trim little entries under 
SITES AND SOILS FOR THE 
GARDEN 
‘They must be weed-free.” 
We both agree as to that. 
Gaillardia 
No American garden really seems complete without its clump of 
graceful-leaved Columbine 
AND GARDENS March, 1912 
Blue Larkspur 
Weeds cannot be cut under and allowed to hide their heads, 
ostrich-like. We must not let the foolish things take silly 
advantage of us that way. We must root them out in 
earnest, and burn them. Moreover, if the garden plot we 
have determined upon is neighbor to a weedy field, we shall 
be called upon to exercise some vigilance over-fence. It is 
a poor neighbor who will not lend hand to organized effort 
in a community to root out obnoxious weeds. We all know 
that nothing is so injurious to a flower garden as too much 
water, or too little. A garden spot upon a slope with a 
southern exposure is ideal for site, permitting, as it does, 
access to sunshine—all flowers need that—and proper drain- 
age often denied to the flat garden. We are reminded, too, 
of the havoc north and west 
winds wreak upon Roses and 
other tender plants and we 
must plan a hedge, shrub- 
bery or some other means of 
shielding our gardens in the 
directions of these winds. 
The owner of Everyman’s 
garden tells me he chose its 
site away from the road- 
front, for he not only wished 
his flowers to be free from 
the dust clouds stirred up by 
the vehicles constantly pass- 
ing, but also because, wishing 
to have the joy of spending 
several hours each day tend- 
ing his plants, he sought a 
spot that would give him 
greater privacy than the 
road-front. 
We both discovered, as 
every one who has a garden 
comes to discover, that dirt 
is not soil—at least, not soil 
in the sense of the proper 
source of nourishment for 
plants. With earth made up 
of sand and clay and de- 
cayed vegetable, called hu- 
mus, plant life must be sup- 
plied from these in propor- 
tion to the requirements of 
species. We usually refer to 
