WINDOW GARDENING 
CH^P^TER I. 
Its Pleasures — Increase in Popular Taste — Refinlnq 
Influences. 
No home of taste is now considered complete without its Window Garden. 
Indeed it may be said that Window Gardening is one of the most elegant, satis- 
factory, 3'et least expensive of all departments of Rural Taste. As a useful means 
for developing a taste for plant-life and a love for flowers, I count nothing so 
effective as this simple style of gardening; for wlio has not noticed that where 
flowers reign, grace of mind and manner soon follow. One of the advantages of 
Window Gardening is its sj/«jj?icj7^, open to every one and impossible to none. 
Thousands of persons confined to their homes for the greater part of their life have 
no greater rural estate than that which the Window Garden affords. To watch 
the unfolding leaves and budding flowers, the development of branch after branch, 
is a study of the reality of plant-life, exquisitel}' interesting to the soul who And* 
in it its only world of pleasure and sentiment. 
It is a form of gardening too, o( permanent use and value. The Window Gar- 
den is independent to a large degree of the varying seasons, for it can be made 
attractive every month in the year. The advent of Spring, Summer and Autumn, 
only render the plants of the Window Garden more luxuriant and make the flow- 
ers more brilliant, but they do not die with the tirst frost or cold wind in winter 
When the prospect without is dreary, we can still look to our fern-cases or 
window-boxes or harigVng-baskets and behold in them objects of increased admi- 
rfition, because they are so charming in their contrast with the desolateness with 
out, and are genial remembrances of greener days gone by. 
The universal popularity of Window Gardens, whether large or small, simple 
or elaborate, is the evidence of a growing taste for flowers and ornamental planta 
m all circles of society. We have only to notice in all our large cities, towns and 
-iUages, how frequent window decorations have become, sometimes seeming as if 
not a single house was without them in many of our most fashionable avenues. Ip 
European cities the citizens indulge even more extensively and passionately in theii 
plant pleasures than we do ; every home is decorated from the wo- Kingman's 
svindow, and its few flower-pots of balsams, to the fernery and tilejard'aieresof tho 
iristocratic mansioa 
Li)irary ^ 
N". C. State ColltgO' 
