96 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



March, 1910 



above ground. Some died from lack of water, others from 

 too much. But the phints that did live encouraged me to 

 redouble my efforts the following year. 



Those annuals that proved satisfactory at first were 

 planted again the second year, and many new ones tried, 

 thus doubling the number of plants. Fewer failures, too, 

 were met with. Reading in a magazine of a woman's first 

 experience with a cold frame, filled me with desire to do 

 likewise. Buying a "collection of perennial flower seeds," 

 I planted them in August, as the catalogues say. Of 

 course, I had all kinds of tribulations before I learned how 

 to manage the cold frames so that my seeds would not 

 damp off or grow too spindling. But No\'ember found me 

 with several hundred little plants, which remained in the 



under glass when frost comes. My special pride is the 

 formal garden, 68x90 feet, containing 3,000 plants and 

 bulbs, and also during June and July 124 feet of sweet 

 peas. This garden is less than a year old, for where it 

 now stands, last year was only a grass lawn, with one long 

 bed of perennials across the rear. The pergola was not 

 built until this May, two months before Figures 3 and 7 

 were taken. So my garden grew, not in one night, like 

 "Jack's Beanstalk," but in one season. It is my first real 

 flower garden, for my plants the three previous summers 

 were scattered along through the kitchen garden, edging 

 the gravel walks. The diagram of the formal garden 

 (Figure 2) is dra^vn to a scale of eight feet to one inch, 

 and gives the position of the plants used, and size of 



SM^»t.««njBi'< 



Fig. 3 — The twin beds showing the aster, phlox and golden glow in bloom, photographed September 6th 



frames all winter. When I closed my country home, about 

 Thanksgiving, the cold frames were closed also. 



With great anxiety did I take my first peep under the 

 glass, when the outer coverings were removed on April 

 first. My delight was unbounded to find about half of 

 them in good condition. There are now ten cold frames 

 in use on my place, but I have decided that it is better to 

 plant seeds of perennials in May or June in open ground, 

 in seed beds; then by fall most of them are large and 

 strong enough to be put into the places where they are 

 to bloom, and the roots protected by manure. Only those 

 seedlings deemed too small and frail to withstand the 

 alternate thawing and freezing in open ground are put 



beds. A front view showing twin beds and pergola en- 

 trance, as seen from the street, is shown in Figure 3. A 

 closer view of a portion of a twin bed, with sweet williams, 

 foxgloves and hollyhocks in bloom July eighth, is given in 

 Figure 7. The illustrations 5, 6, 7 and 8 were taken inside 

 of the formal garden in July and August, and show beds of 

 flowers with grass walks. 



Ever since beginning the gardening, one of my aims has 

 been to see continuous bloom among the flowers. This 

 has been much more diflicult to obtain than I had at first 

 supposed, because the flowering period of most plants is 

 only from two to four weeks. The twin beds, 11x33 feet, 

 each side of the pergola, contain 1,000 plants and bulbs. 



