The Garden Magazine, April, 1921 
101 
i discussion should follow for this will bring to light much un- 
I suspected ability. A few good subjects for discussion are: 
Fall Planting — is it preferable to spring planting for our 
locality? 
What’s the best form of winter Protection, and why? 
Roses — which are the best, and why? 
Best ways of making slips or cuttings. 
What are the best ways of screening? 
What garden improvement does our town most need? 
Formal or informal gardening — which is better for the small 
place? 
A delightful element is introduced when cuttings of various 
plants, or superfluous plant infants, are brought to the meeting 
for the members to take home. A collection of garden photo- 
graphs may be the work of another member. 
Lantern slides may be had, some of them beautifully colored, 
showing details of charming gardens both here and abroad. 
Some garden associations have fine collections of them and use 
them in “missionary tours” in gardenless parts of their city. 
Lectures are stimulating and any stray expert or gardenwise 
visitor should by all means be invited to give the club the benefit 
of his or her experience; but no club need depend for stimulus 
upon the outside lecturer. There is more stimulus in meeting 
your own problems in your own way, and asking for advice 
when you need it. Some very interesting experiments in hor- 
ticulture were made in this country by women nearly two hun- 
dred years ago when lecturers on gardening were none and the 
only way to find out if a plant would grow was to try it ; a method 
that still remains unequalled. There are many fascinating ex- 
periments that can be tried by two or three club members, and 
the results given to all are vastly interesting. Horticultural 
experiment is so much fun it’s a pity to leave it entirely to 
professionals; and quite unnecessary. 
Affiliation With Other Clubs or Organization 
I F ONE or more of the club members be members also of one 
of the larger garden associations, then the resources of the 
larger organization are at the disposal of the young club; and 
larger organizations can be very useful. There is the School 
Garden Association, in touch with School Gardens all over 
the country. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs has 
been sending out a “Travelling Portfolio of Civic Art” (gotten 
up, 1 believe, by the New York Sorosis). It is large and delight- 
fully illustrated, each page made by an expert, and it has a 
comprehensive garden section. The Women’s National Agri- 
cultural and Horticultural Association, with a membership 
from Maine to California of professional women gardeners 
(although any one who likes a garden may join), is very ready 
with assistance and can often put you in touch with some one 
near who can give precisely the assistance needed; for it is a 
cooperative association. The Garden Club of America admits 
clubs as a whole into its membership and has among its members 
some of the best gardeners of the country. 
This being in touch with the best gardeners the country over, 
makes the woman with the tiniest garden feel as if her work were 
an integral part of the big movement for lovelier homes and a 
more beautiful country — and in truth it is. 
Exhibitions 
E NGROSSING as are the activities of the club to the in- 
dividual member, to the outsider it is the Exhibitions 
that are the big thing — the Flower Shows and Flower Market. 
These may be many or few, but every club should have them, 
and it is astonishing what an effective showing can be made by 
gardeners who thought they had “nothing to show.” 
Exhibitions of single kinds of flowers: a Gladiolus Show, a 
Dahlia Show, a Chrysanthemum Show, and of course a Rose 
Show, are very popular. For a club that starts in the Autumn, 
nothing can be more charming than a Bulb Show. In fact, to 
start a “Bulb Club” is one of the simplest and most effective 
ways of arousing garden interest in your town. Everyone 
knows that spring-flowering bulbs may be bought very easily 
in large quantities and a group may buy them by the hundred or 
thousand, dividing the quantities among themselves. The 
sight of golden Daffodils, of scarlet and white Tulips swaying in 
the breeze, or of borders of deep blue Hyacinths, blooming w'here 
before all was bare, is enough to wake an interest in gardening 
in any town; and since they bloom in the early spring, the in- 
terest wakes at a propitious moment. 
Tables made of boards laid on barrels, the whole covered with 
green cambric; glass preserve-jars for the flowers; a piazza that 
is sheltered from the wind, or a large, well-lighted room — in 
these are all the material aids necessary for a single Flower 
Show. Suggestions as to the “points” on w'hich prizes are 
awarded may be had from one of the larger societies. 
A competitive exhibition of gardens necessarily stretches over 
several weeks, as it is only fair that the competing gardens be 
seen at their prettiest. Each gardener sends word to the judges 
when his garden will be “at home” and the decisions are made 
after the last one has been viewed. 
Civic Improvement 
T HE new little gardens springing up, the flowery borders, 
cannot help but make the town more attractive, just as the 
Crocus in a dozen tiny dooryards of Beacon Street area delight 
to all Boston; but beyond this, much civic improvement may 
be accomplished by a group of gardeners. In one club, the 
members tried tree planting; each one taking her block and 
simply suggesting or asking her neighbors to set out a tree; as 
soon as several house owners had done so, the rest followed suit. 
The trees in this case were Horsechestnuts. Streets of different 
trees, blooming at different seasons would greatly prolong the 
gala period. A street where in front of each house was a 
Japanese Flowering Cherry, would look in April like a bit of 
Japan at her loveliest moment; on another street, a bit later, 
might be the dazzling white of Magnolias — there is such a one 
in Rochester, N. Y. 
A Garden Club could beg for the two-foot wide strip next the 
fence of a school playground and make it lovely with vines and 
shrubs stout enough to withstand an occasional base-ball, thus 
giving the children something more refreshing to look on than 
pavement and iron railing. The Garden Club of Alma, Michi- 
gan, used a vacant lot as a trial and experiment ground thus 
making it into a charming little Botanic Garden. If the schools 
are slow' in the matter, the Club starts gardening for children. 
The Garden Club of Lincoln, Nebraska, cooperating with the 
Commercial Club, established and manages for the children a 
prosperous Children’s Market. The local Garden Club has 
undertaken to beautify the grounds around the hospital at 
Flushing, N. Y. In Ridgewood, N. J. is a Garden Club that 
numbers more than two hundred men of the place, and is the 
common meeting ground for all the local activities. 
The small Garden Club in the small town may seem an in- 
significant affair, yet no one factor in all our American life 
is able to make so definitely and positively for out-door beauty. 
We have such sore need, not of great places — of these we have a 
goodly number — but of lovely little places, of little gardens full 
of charm and character, as gardens are when made by folk who 
love them; of suburbs where bits of native loveliness in tree and 
grass are saved by quick concerted action from the contractor’s 
destruction that sometimes goes with “improvement” (which, 
as St. Paul said of science, is often “falsely so-called”). We 
need lovely little parks — places of rest and refreshment not all 
asphalt, and iron benches, and deadly uniformity; we need 
playgrounds that have flow'ers and shade, as w r ell as up-to-date 
play apparatus; school buildings that have a setting of garden 
and greenery instead of resembling a prison; school gardens 
supervised by real gardeners, rather than by overworked 
teachers. All this the little Garden Club can do. 
And beside this work for the community, the Garden Club 
inevitably makes life sweeter and brighter to every one who is 
in it or who touches it. So — start your Garden Club! 
