414. AMERICAN HOMES AND GAR DENS June, 1906 
-——- SANIT TAs oe 
THE WASHABLE WALL COVERING 
Every American home owner should know Sanitas. 
It is the most satisfactory wall hanging made. It is 
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tion gives it strength enough to stand the wear and tear 
of everyday usage. Its surface is finished in oil paint 
and affords no lodging place for dust and germs. It can 
be kept clean with soap and water. Its designs and colors 
are varied and beautiful enough to use in 
any room of any home 
The Sanitas Department of Interior Decoration supplies suggestions 
for wall treatment and samples free Whnte Dept. P for circulars 
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320 BROADWAY NEW YORK 
TWO BEST SSK IN THE WORLD 
METAL LATH & ae CO, NFS, 200: 
Seasonable talk on Good Paint for the 
3 e eo 
Preservation of all classes of Metal and 
S rim Painting Wood, is contained in the New Pamphlet 
B-106. Write for free copy, Paint De- 
SR 1110), 
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flowers are tubular, with a wide flare at the 
outer edge. Some have a border of rich 
color on a white ground, others a white border 
on a dark ground, and some are, heavily 
spotted. 
Be on the lookout for rose enemies. They 
will be sure to come. I get the start of them, 
and keep it, by using the same insecticide I 
have advised for aster-beetle—Ivory soap, 
melted, and diluted with water—spraying the 
bushes all over, two or three times a week, 
until their season of activity is over. Have 
some one bend the bush down while you 
apply the infusion with a sprayer that will 
throw a good stream well up among the 
foliage. 
Be sure to have plenty of mignonette in the 
garden. ‘his flower has the most delicious 
fragrance of any annual. It is not showy, but 
there is real beauty in its spike of fringy bloom, 
for all that. You will find use for it every 
day among your cut flowers. 
I confess to a great liking for most of the 
old-fashioned flowers. What can be showier 
than the great, round, fluffy-petalled poppies 
in crimson, and purple, and white? Bachelor 
buttons are really charming things, in spite 
of their prosaic name. A handful of blue 
ones makes a delightful bouquet for the break- 
fast table, if lightly dropped into a slender 
crystal vase. Don’t try to “arrange” them; 
if you do you will make a failure of it. They 
arrange themselves. 
If you have old plants in the winter garden 
that you do not care to make use of another 
season, make as many cuttings from them as 
possible, and give them to the. children who 
love flowers. ‘Tell them how to care for them, 
and encourage them to watch their develop- 
ment, and study their habits. You will be 
surprised at the interest the boys and girls 
will take in this phase of gardening—espe- 
cially the children of the poorer classes, who 
have little with which to brighten the homes 
in which they live. I have seen some of the 
finest geraniums I ever saw anywhere growing 
in the homes of the poor. I found that the 
children gave the plants the very best of care, 
because they loved them, and it seemed as if 
the plants appreciated the kind treatment they 
were given, and put forth all their efforts to 
express their gratitude for it. Such great, 
healthy specimens as they were—vigorous in 
leaf and bloom, ‘making sunshine in a shady 
place” by the beauty they brought into the 
homes of the poor people, who love flowers 
quite as much as the rich—perhaps more. Who 
shall say? ‘Therefore, never throw away a 
cutting. Some one will want the plant that 
can be grown from it, if you have no use for it. 
Look well to the geraniums you are grow- 
ing on for winter use. If left to themselves 
they will be likely to make a long and “leggy” 
development, which is not at all graceful, and 
on which there will be few flowering points. 
Take each young plant in hand as soon as it 
is five or six inches tall, and pinch off its top. 
This will lead to the development of side 
branches. Pineh off the ends of these when 
they have grown to be a few inches long, and 
keep on with this treatment, all over the plant, 
until you have a bushy, compact specimen. 
In this way, you get a plant which will have 
many flowering points, and in winter it will 
give you a dozen or twenty trusses of bloom, 
where the plant allowed to train itself will 
have not more than half a dozen, at most. 
Of all plants adapted to window culture the 
geranium can be most awkward and ungrace- 
ful; but it is very tractable, and can be grown 
into symmetrical shape with little trouble, if 
you take it in hand while small, and give it 
frequent attention while it is in the formative 
period. Let it get the start of you and it will 
be almost impossible to make a fine plant out 
of it. 
