AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
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A MONTHLY KALENDAR OF TIMELY GARDEN OPERA- 
TIONS AND USEFUL HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS 
ABOUT THE HOME GARDEN AND 
GROUNDS 
All queries will gladly be answered by the Editor. 
reply is desired by subscribers stamps should be enclosed therewith. 
September, 1912 
If a personal 
gq); DO not think there is a lovelier month in the 
whole of the season than September in the 
garden. There is something satisfying about 
well-settled beds of gorgeous Asters, the 
Gladioli, Cosmos and the Lilies that have 
not yet forsaken us. We may miss the Daf- 
fodils of ie the Roses of June, the Columbines of July 
and Veronica, fair maid of the August garden, but we still 
have Ageratum, Anemone Campanula, Clarkia, Dahlia, 
Foxglove, Godetia, Helianthus Lobelia, Moonflower, dear 
little Love-in-a-Mist, and many other old favorites with us. 
We look around upon our garden’s delights with pride, 
and even our garden mistakes seem trivial beside the suc- 
cesses that have come to our patient cultivation of the plants 
we love. Over there, we tell ourselves, our hardy border 
has come out too thinly, but we can make amends even in 
the month to come, for by the time October’s planting is 
here our Summer’s experience will have shown us wherein 
we may make next year’s garden even far more lovely than, 
perhaps, this season’s one has been. You will be wishing 
An weer: of effective planting around the house 
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to take note of the color effects derived by planting—you 
hardly knew what, when your inexperienced hand first sowed 
the seed or set out the seedlings. 
OW, as you look about you, there appears too much dark 
color just there near the Hollyhocks, or the Cosmos 
has come out all white and pale Lilac. Next year it will be 
right, for as soon as it is possible you will replant for better 
color effects than it was possible you could do until a Summer 
in your garden had taught you its worth-while lessons. You 
will do some plant moving later; those stalks which spread 
too thickly yonder by the Portulaca bed, quite hiding and 
almost smothering the bright-faced little earth-clasping spots 
of gorgeous color, will have to be transplanted to those 
‘‘thin”’ spots by the Foxgloves, where you are standing. 
EPTEMBER was wont, in days of old, to appear to be 
a cool-sounding month, in name, but we know how mer- 
ciless its droughts have come to be and how carefully we 
must tend our late-season gardens if we would not have 
them become dried up and sorrowful things, which a little 
labor and a little love for them would have kept fresh and 
refreshing to the sight. You will wish to make little tours 
of inspection around the home grounds every day, giving suc- 
cor to here a plant and there a plant which needs your care. 
Stir up the sun-baked soil around the plant-bases, when they 
need it, and make little tunnels to the roots so water may 
reach them. A good plan is to remove a couple of inches of 
soil from around the plants (the choice shrubs and the like), 
and after watering until the soil will soak up no more mois- 
ture, replace the soil, crumbling it fine’and letting itact asa mulch. 
HE garden-maker will be looking forward to the forth- 
coming florists’ Fall Bulb catalogues, planning selec- 
tions, placing orders and preparing—it is none too soon— 
for the coming Fall Bulb-planting activities. The lawn will 
require much attention this month. 
EKPTEMBER’S blistering days are often a discourage- 
ment to the lawn-maker, but he need not despair if a 
goodly water supply and hose are available. Just sprinkling 
the lawn actually does more harm than good. The kindly in- 
tentioned home-maker who sprinkles the lawn for five min- 
utes every day probably wonders why his grass does not 
keep up. The trouble is that lawns need to be drenched. 
They require many and frequent thorough wettings, al- 
though one must take care never to rip up places in the sod 
by directing the stream of water from the hose-nozzle di- 
rectly upon the grass plot. The nose should be so manipu- 
lated that the water will drop from it in the manner of 
falling rain. 
S for those plants which the garden-maker will wish to 
move about, the young Hollyhocks, Sweet William, 
Gaillardia and Clove Pinks, must be taken up and reset by 
the middle of the month or left undisturbed until the coming 
Spring months. April, too, will be the month for trans- 
planting Anemones, Yuocas, hardy Chrysanthemums, Tri- 
tomas and Magnolias. Do not try to transplant them in the Fall. 
