January, 1914 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
33 
Around the Garden 
A MONTHLY KALENDER 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. K a personal 
reply is desired by subscribers stamps should be enclosed therewith 
THE NEW YEAR’S GARDEN 
By Gardner Teall 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves 
HAPPY New Year, and may much of it be 
spent in a lovely garden! There is an old 
English proverb which saith : 
“If the grass grows in Janiveer 
It grows the worse for ’t all the year.” 
and yet another that declares: 
“If January calends be summerly gay, 
“ ’Twill be winterly weather till the calends of May.” 
So we must be on the lookout for all these signs that are 
dear to the hearts of those of us who are old-fashioned 
enough to “set store” by the Farmers' Almanac! The in- 
evitable snowfall which comes to seem a commonplace affair 
after the excitement of the first flurry, seems to 
have meant nothing but just “snow as snow" until 
Scoresby, indefatigable arctic voyager that he 
was, appears to have been the first to observe 
the forms of snow crystals, those veritable flow- 
ers in the garden of Boreas, which, when we 
least expect it, remind us that our New Year’s 
resolutions will not be complete unless we in- 
clude therein the one to find greater joy in our 
dery of wintriness. These will be days when it will be 
good to come in from the bracing outdoor air, cheeks aglow, 
and sitting beside our fires to picture in our mind’s eye the 
gardens we have missed outside. We are grateful now 
/or every sprig ol green indoors, and we turn to the plants 
which form our little inside “greenery” with tendcrest solici- 
tude. Perhaps we are harmfully care-taking and over- 
water them, or keep the room temperature too high for 
them, in consequence of which they do not thrive. Just be- 
cause the rose-bushes in the outdoor garden have all to 
be bundled up like Italian bambini does not mean that plants 
within the house must be suffocated with heat and smoth- 
ered with attention. While the night temperature for house 
plants should never fall below forty-five degrees, seventy 
degrees of moist heat is the most satisfactory condition for 
the indoor garden in daytime. Too much heat and too 
little light will make your plants produce long, leafless 
stalks, leaf-tufted at the end, but unsightly. House plants 
thrive best by stove heat, for furnace heat, being 
so dry, injures them anil prevents their fullest de- 
velopment. 
FERNS AND WINDOW GARDENS 
M AN^ amateurs do not understand that to 
have success with Terns indoors requires 
some study of the peculiar requirements of this 
class of house-plants. Any apartment in which 
the air is unduly dried and vitiated by the modern 
gardens the season to come by planning for more ^* ti f e eg f modes of heating and lighting are not conducive 
beautiful flowers, the memory of which will g ° a ^ s 0 ^ to successful Fern culture. Ferns do not stand 
spring up befoie the mind s eye even with so limited room precludes the fluctuations in temperature as well as do many 
u j°gg er ’ as the use of large plants other window-plants, hence they thrive better in 
crystalline and cold a memory 
drifting, flowerlike flakes of snow, the frosted window-pane. 
And yet how wonderful is the window-clinging frost-work, 
mimicry of fern frond leafv foliage, like a shadow on the 
garden wall in miniature turned white, a glistening embroi- 
Iarge rooms than in small rooms. Because we find luxuriant 
Tern-growths in shaded woodland nooks, we must not labor 
in the mistaken belief tfiat Terns do not require sunlight; 
Ferns become sickly when placed far from window-light. 
The Rose garden in summer and the same in winter. Showing the improved method of protecting the rose trees 
