ADVANTAGE OF BUYING 
OUT OF 
SEASON 
To “Heel-in'’ is merely to lay the plants closely along the side of a trench, when the roots are well covered and the tops protect each other 
B ' T IS perfectly conceivable that any number of persons — 
good gardeners, too — will shake their heads at the idea 
and put it aside with a “no thank you!” For any 
i number of us are ready to take up other interests 
when autumn comes; moreover, there is a general feeling that 
certain things belong to certain times and seasons and should 
not be carried beyond these. But 1 am going to ask you to 
reconsider, if you are one of these; and to examine a little into 
this idea of a distribution of the work in which we are all inter- 
ested (else we would not be here in this magazine). The matter 
of overdoing at one season to the detriment of oneself, and 
possibly not to the advantage at any rate of the work done, is 
as vital a factor in garden making as it is in any other enterprise. 
Hence if there is any way by which it can be avoided it seems 
to me legitimate to inquire into it, and perhaps proper to adopt. 
The only way of avoiding a pile-up however in anything, 
as we are perfectly aware, is to keep up with it — to spread it 
thin by dividing it by the days of the year and assigning the 
divisions each to its day, if this is possible; if it is not, to use the 
weeks or the months instead of the days. But can even this 
last be done in so distinctly a “seasonal occupation” as garden- 
ing? Not altogether, possibly; and not so much in gardening 
as in garden making — which is a little different. But to a sur- 
prising degree it can; and to the general lightening of some of the 
most arduous tasks thereof, as a matter of fact. Indeed the 
work which may be carried on out of the season of seed sowing, 
cultivation, and harvest is the truly heavy work. And to prove 
to you that this is so, take a look at the nurserymen. 
1 low is a large nursery carried on, as far as the work of plant- 
ing and unplanting and transplanting and all that sort of thing, 
is concerned? Do they send to the field, for example, and dig 
for us the Cornus Amomum and theSyringa coronarius and the 
Diervillas and the what-not of our order, when this comes in on 
a sunny March or April day? They do not! 
These shrubs and the smaller specimens of deciduous trees of 
various kinds as well, have all been either out of the ground 
altogether and in the warehouses since late autumn, or else 
heeled-in in blocks, row on row, over the same period. For it 
would be a physical impossibility for a large nursery to dig and 
ship, as orders came in, during the rush of the springtime. 
I ndeed some of the largest growers offer certain of their stock, 
notably Roses, at a special price if it is ordered before a certain 
date; this date being set in conformity with the time when they 
will begin potting up the heeled-in plants. Everything ordered 
before this can be counted and tagged and collected into a group, 
and all but packed and shipped, you see — hence it will not need 
handling when the rush commences, nor will it need handling a 
second time. 
If we think of the things that we intend setting out — trees 
both fruit and ornamental, shrubs, small fruits and even Roses — 
as even now being dug and packed away for the winter in what- 
ever nursery we may be going to buy them from, we may very 
suitably begin to feel that to order and have delivered now is the 
better way, even if we cannot set them out where they are to 
remain. Fords it not better to heel them in close to their final 
abiding places, under the conditions which they will be under 
when finally planted, than to have them thus treated at some 
remote place, to endure the further strain of a long journey in the 
spring? 
Certainly it is; and though the material, as handled by those 
expert in doing this work at the nurseries, is not perhaps really 
injured by the process, I personally dislike the flattened out, 
sardine effect that pervades roots and branches of everything 
shipped into a place in the spring. 1 1 is very often not overcome 
for a long time, and 1 have seen trees which never came back 
to their proper shape until pruning had brought them there. 
Consequently if it is possible to avoid it, why subject them to it? 
There is indeed no reason for postponing the purchase and 
delivery of deciduous material now, even though it may not be 
possible to use this for a year or two, or several, in its permanent 
place. Get it on to the ground and into the ground in some 
convenient spot, even though building operations and grading 
and no end of things are yet to be done. For it will then be 
making the growth which, otherwise, you would still have to 
wait for, if it were not shipped in until everything was ready to 
put it into permanent place; and the local shifting from your 
own “nursery” is a matter of so little disturbance that, done at 
the right time and in the right way, it will not appreciably affect 
either trees or shrubs. You may therefore have the greatly 
longed for finished effect practically as soon as your planting is 
done, instead of having to wait two to three years for things to 
grow up to their spaces and to each other. 
ioo 
