THE BROADER GARDENING 
HELENA RADEMACHER-PICKENBACH 
Editors’ Note: This article of “The Broader Gardening” will be the more'enjoyed 
because it is not untried theory, but a sound philosophy built upon substantial experience. 
Mrs. Pickenbach’s garden (pictured on following pages) is the voiceless but convincing 
apostle of the practicability of her gospel, and won for itself last season one of the three 
awards of The Society of Little Gardens. 
COHERE is much reading matter on gardening, valuable 
or ’ nocuous > according to its character or to the read- 
er’s P ower °f discernment. Is there room for more on 
StUmP^ the subject? There is—if not alone it lead us to 
higher ideals of nature knowledge and consequent greater de¬ 
velopment of our sense of beauty, but also help us to see that 
gardening should not be confined to our own home grounds. It 
should rather include our wider “entourage” as we may call the 
whole extent of village, town, or city. 
Better appreciation of beauty takes for granted, first, the 
necessity for greater neatness and order. If, then, each tenant 
or owner would learn a bit of artistry from Nature, in the dec¬ 
orating of his few feet of front or back yard, terrace, doorway, 
or window ledge, what an immense step would already have been 
taken toward recovering, what seems to be our lost sense of 
values in the turmoil of to-day! 
A vine will luxuriate even between the flagging of a basement. 
In Europe, many a fagade, offensive to good taste, is thus hid¬ 
den. A heavy, coarser vine can be made to cover an architec¬ 
tural sin—a lighter one, reveal hitherto unseen charm. A win¬ 
dow box can be turned into a tiny garden of spirit and character 
with other means than the stereotyped red Geranium and 
variegated Vinca! 
We do see good foundation plantings of evergreens—a great 
improvement over the ubiquitous soul-wearying company of 
red Salvia, Hydrangea, and Coleus, or the shrieking sisterhood of 
scarlet Ganna and magenta Petunia! But why not try to 
induce each householder to specialize in certain perennials or 
combinations, such as Veronica, Larkspur, Iris, Astilbe and 
many others—all quickly increasing, robust growers—or even 
many of the common wild flowers seldom seen away from coun¬ 
try roadside or meadow? 
With the conscience and knowledge of the average tenant 
stimulated, he will also come to imitate nature, rather than 
acquire the products which the “greenhouse man” turns out by 
the millions, and millions of people buy because they know no 
better! Have they any idea, for instance, that the poor, thin, 
dry earth—more like cement than soil—usually found around 
city houses, in sunbaked streets with southern exposure— 
makes an ideal medium for a most interesting array of Sedums 
and Live-for-evers and other plants of similar habit? Or that, 
on the shady sides, numerous shade-loving plants and bushes 
would flourish gratefully in a bed of good top-soil? There is a 
crying need for the generalizing of simple flower-lore to encour¬ 
age the forming of individual taste and thereby to combat the 
deadly commonplaceness of the streets. Nature can never be 
accused of sameness. How she would chuckle at the thought— 
with no two blades of grass alike! 
With the advent of public gardening, the eyesore of the “un¬ 
improved” property, or lot, must pass. Was ever a word more 
aptly applied? Why should a lot be unimproved? An owner 
of such a lot is bound to remove the snow from his property for 
the comfort and safety of the passer-by—for the ethical educa¬ 
tion of every citizen, he should be compelled to “clean up.” 
With the scattering of a few self-sowing seeds, a demoralizing 
non-necessity can be transformed into a bit of beauty. There 
is, here, no question of an argument in favor of a fanciful, im¬ 
practicable “vision,” but simply a plea for a sane step toward 
fuller ethical and spiritual awakening. 
F ROM the larger field of public gardening let us step into 
the “setting” of our homes where we find “beauty spots” 
of gardens—often creations of private taste; there are also really 
interesting and notable gardens, thought out by landscapists 
who are men and women of power, brains, and individuality. 
They are, however, still the exceptions. Let us be thankful for, 
and admiring of their work, and pray that their number may 
increase! 
But—why are there still so many “formal” gardens, those 
aggregations of lines, perpendicular, horizontal and parallel? 
Hedge, drive, walk and border are broken, at “even” distances, 
by bush or evergreen, or “object” of wood or stone! 
Such gardens are often soulless masterpieces of evenness and 
precision. Dials or pools, as axes, around which all lines must 
radiate, and the highly favored angle of 45 degrees, further add 
to this mania for symmetry. Surely all this artificiality must 
produce blindness to the charm of individuality which cannot 
live in a mass of conventions and replicas, anti-nature in their 
essence! 
Is this lack of distinctive character the result of the pre¬ 
dominance of the man-made architectural element over that of 
the God-made natural? Here is a bush or tree—opposite, an¬ 
other like it; an opening in the hedge is reflected in its vis-a-vis; 
a column must have its mate! Everything must “balance,” as 
in the Ark—only, in those days, they had no evergreen beasts 
and birds! Real animals took the place of the topiary nightmares 
of to-day. 
This brings to mind the story of the woman whose half¬ 
million dollar garden was of the formal type. Lrom the 
centre of the terrace, which was parallel with the house, ran— 
at right angles to it—the main drive straight through the 
scheme. On both sides of the beginning of the drive were 
summer-houses—alike as twins. One day, a boy stole apples, 
and was caught by the mistress and imprisoned in one summer¬ 
house. The lady’s agony of mind from the torture of the lack 
of balance in the destiny of the two summer-houses inspired 
her to imprison her own boy in the vacant one, and her mind 
was then at rest! 
Can we turn for soul-refreshment from the whirl of the city or 
the sophistication of “social” life to such an arctic atmosphere? 
Lor true recreation, surely, we need more of real life and the 
world of truth and simplicity found only in the magic of wood 
and dell, with its limitless wild fairy-life of creature, flower, and 
fungous growth. 
Not all of us can have all this beauty; those of wealth can 
have more or less of it, we all can have some—but do we reach 
out for it? It seems that the average person must first be 
educated to the entrancing beauty of nature before it occurs to 
him to bring home her charm, by intelligent understanding and 
selection. We can acquire many of the precious pictures and 
treasures from the domain of highest art with comparatively 
small trouble and with immense benefit to ourselves and others. 
So will poetry creep into our soul and our eye become that of the 
painter. 
N 
tifu 
O LOOLISH person can create a garden and, as Kipling 
says, no gardens are made by exclaiming “Oh—how beau- 
, and sitting in the shade!” Yet every man has the embryo 
of nature-love within him, even though dormant. 
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