xiv AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
September, 1909 
w CORRESPONDENCE © 
The Editor of American Homes and Gardens desires to extend an invitation to all its readers to send to the Correspondence Department inquiries on any matter 
pertaining to the decorating and furnishing of the home and to the developing of the home grounds. 
All letters accompanied by retum postage will be answered promptly by mail. 
Replies that are of general benefit will be published in this Department. 
Problems in Home Furnishing 
By Alice M. Kellogg 
Author of ‘Home Furnishing: Practical and Artistic ”’ 
AN ARTISTIC STUDY LAMP 
a ILL you advise me,” writes a cor- 
respondent from Rhode Island, F. 
D. G., “as to buying a lamp for my 
library that will be pleasing in outline and give 
a good light for the children to study by? The 
shade for the lamp is also difficult to decide 
upon as they are so gaudy in color. I prefer 
A modern student lamp 
to use kerosene oil if I can find a tasteful 
shape in a lamp.” 
‘The acorn design, shown in the illustration, 
is the most pleasing one for the library of this 
correspondent and it may be had in a soft, 
old brass finish. If the room is very large a 
double fixture is better. This is made with 
the same standard but with twin lights sup- 
plied by a center oil tank. ‘The cost for the 
double lamp is $22.00 and for the single, 
$18.00. A plain light green shade, commonly 
called celadon, gives the best light for study- 
ing, and is also attractive with almost every 
kind of furnishings. 
PAPERING A DARK HALL 
“The hallway in my apartment is rather 
dark and is now covered with a deep red paper. 
‘The rooms opening out of it have green, blue 
and brown for their walls and I am puzzled 
to know what to do, in the event of my land- 
lord giving me a new paper, to improve every- 
thing. Please suggest something that will 
make less distracting the outlook from the hall, 
and that will at the same time give a cheerful 
tone to the hall itself.”—I. T., New Jersey. 
It would be worth while to re-paper this 
hall to secure the conditions desired by its 
tenants. If it is very small, a plain paper will 
be the best choice, or one of the texture papers 
in fine lines. ‘The “‘oatmeal”’ papers are taking 
the place of the old ingrain papers, as the 
former do not fade quickly. A higher grade 
in a plain paper is the silk fiber. Sometimes 
a narrow stripe or a closely set all-over pattern 
is a better choice than a plain paper. ‘These 
points may be settled by trying several samples 
against the wall. The color to keep to is a 
warm buff, light enough to give a feeling of 
sunlight in the inclosed space. 
WALL TINTS FOR A CUBAN HOME 
“You will oblige me greatly by suggesting 
a color scheme for the first floor of my new 
home, such as may be made with water-color 
tints, as this seems the most suitable for the 
Cuban climate. ‘There is an entrance hall, a 
back hall with staircase, parlor, dining-room 
and office.”—A. G. 
When the wall decoration is limited in this 
way to tinting the safest plan is use either buff 
or light green, as red, blue and yellow are too 
harsh. For the rooms described, the hall, 
dining-room and office may be in buff, chang- 
ing the tone very slightly if some variation is 
preferred, and making the parlor wall a soft, 
light green. ‘To secure the right tones, even 
in only these two colors, there must be skilful 
mixing of the color with white to get a light 
enough tint. As the floor of the hall is laid 
in colored tile in soft shades of terra cotta it 
would add to the wall effect if a stencilled 
border in the same colors was applied over the 
tint just above the baseboard, at the sides and 
under the picture-molding. 
BATHROOM WALLS 
An inquiry for a practical treatment for the 
walls of a bathroom comes from a reader in 
Idaho, Mrs. J. K. H. In reply, this depart- 
ment recommends oil paint in a deep cream or 
white, to match the woodwork, putting on 
enough coats to make a solid finish. Over 
this a stencil pattern in light blue, light green, 
pink or yellow may be applied, fitting it into 
the spaces to make panels. Such a border, 
however, cannot always be adopted, and some- 
times it is necessary to use some kind of a 
covering to protect an imperfect surface. If 
a wall-paper is chosen there are pretty designs 
quite different from the old-fashioned tile 
effects, and in the better grade of papers they 
wear very well. A thin oil-cloth made es- 
pecially for bathroom walls is now made in un- 
glazed patterns and this makes quite an ideal 
appearance. Instead of a colored wall in a 
bathroom, the cream-white is now preferred in 
the best homes. 
(Continued on page vt) 
Garden Work About the Home 
By Charles Downing Lay 
PLANTING BULBS IN THE WILD GARDEN 
. AN I plant bulbs under the trees in my 
wild garden? What kinds shall I 
use?” F.C. H. Your wish to plant 
bulbs in the wild garden is a reasonable one 
and easy to accomplish. 
No flowers are more beautiful or give more 
joy than those of early spring. A snowdrop 
poking its head through the leaves in February 
means more to the spirit than all the purple 
and gold of September, and the first crocus, 
and the first daffodil mark the beginning of 
spring with more certainty than the calendar. 
Planted in the wild garden, bulbs need 
almost no care. In fact, I think they do better 
if they are left alone. A rocky bank sloping 
gently to the southeast and shaded by decid- 
uous trees like the maple, birch and oak, with 
a dogwood here and there, is the best place 
for such a garden. 
The protection from wind afforded by the 
bank and the trees and the light shade which 
the latter cast are a help to the bulbs, no less 
than the carpet of leaves which fall from the 
trees above and keep them from freezing and 
thawing during the winter. 
This is the season to start the wild garden, 
for spring blooming things can seldom be 
planted except in the autumn. 
The soil should be good and rich but not 
heavily manured. It had better be spaded 
over to make it soft and mellow and easy to 
plant. The slope is an advantage because it is 
warmer, and the flowers will be earlier, and 
because the water will not stand there in 
winter to rot the bulbs, or the crowns of other 
plants. 
At the bottom of the bank I should plant 
masses of winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), 
snowdrops, crocuses, in several varieties, 
grape hyacinths, blood roots, scilla, chiono- 
doxa and trillium. Already we have pro- 
vided for continuous bloom from _ earliest 
spring to the middle of May! These should 
be planted in irregular masses of two or three 
hundred bulbs with spaces left between for 
other things. 
Higher up on the bank I should have the 
two beautiful early tulips, T. greigi and T. 
Kaufmanniana, with dodecatheon, dog’s-tooth 
violets, and fritillary, leucojum vernum, orni- 
thogallum, and puschkinia, planted in the 
same large masses with spaces between. 
‘Toward the top of the bank is the place to 
put all the daffodils, narcissi and jonquils, 
with some of the late cottage tulips if it be 
not too shady. 
The spaces which have been left between 
should be filled with ferns, anemones, merten- 
sia, myrtle, pachysandra, etc., which will cover 
the ground in the summer making it green 
and pleasant to look at while the leaves of the 
bulbs are dying, and giving some protection 
to the bulbs. 
