The Flower Garden in the Spring 
with perennials should not be touched in the 
spring until the plants have shown them¬ 
selves above ground, as much injury might 
be done. When the perennials are well up, 
some fine, well-rotted manure should be 
carefully dug in around them. 
The hardy chrysanthemums start very early 
in the spring, and the best time to trans¬ 
plant them is when the shoots are about 
three inches high. Lift the old plant care¬ 
fully, and with the spade divide it into 
sections having about lour shoots to each. 
The beds to receive them should have been 
already prepared, and should be in a sunny 
place, along a stone wall or against a build¬ 
ing or in front of a shrubbery, where there 
is some protection from the frosts of early 
autum n. 
Trees and shrubs should be planted as 
soon as the ground can be worked. Mag¬ 
nolias of all varieties, hybrid rhododendrons, 
mountain laurel and azalea mollis (which 
does not thrive in cold localities) should 
only be planted in the spring. Rhododen¬ 
drons and azalea mollis do best in a partly 
shady location, and should be well mulched 
and not allowed to suffer from drought. 
Hedges of all varieties can be set out in 
early April. Where the winters are severe, 
privet is often winter-killed. This some¬ 
times occurs after several years of growth 
and is a great loss. It is not so much a 
continual low temperature which kills, as 
the alternate freezing and thawing of our 
variable climate. Hemlock spruce, Siberian 
arbor-vita; and honey-locust, all make hardy 
and satisfactory hedges. After a hedge has 
been planted out, the earth over the roots 
should receive a top dressing of manure. 
Uidess your gardener thoroughly under¬ 
stands his business, and is also painstaking, 
you should give personal supervision to the 
setting out of trees and shrubs. The hole 
to receive the tree must always be made 
much larger than the roots, in the bottom 
of this, place first a quantity of well-rotted 
manure, which should be covered with good 
earth, free from lumps and stones. Then 
place the tree, which should be held quite 
straight by one man, while another, after 
carefully spreading out the roots, shovels in 
the earth. When the hole is about half 
filled up it is well to turn on the hose and 
thoroughly wet the ground under and all 
around the roots. The rest of the earth 
can then be filled in, well pounded down, 
and the whole covered with a mulch of 
manure. If the weather be dry, the earth 
around the tree must be well-watered and 
soaked to the roots twice a week, and the 
tree will be pretty sure to live. 
Evergreens, particularly large ones, are 
often difficult to make live, unless given the 
sandy soil they love, and in localities where 
the soil is of clay it will be a struggle to get 
them well started. When this is once done, 
however, they rarely die. Nearly all decidu¬ 
ous trees should be carefully pruned when 
planting, and the amateur should inform 
himself upon the best manner of cutting. 
Shrubs of all kinds require to be set out 
as carefully as trees. They make the best 
effect if planted on the edge of the lawn, 
along fences, as screens about buildings, or 
in masses in odd corners. They should be 
well pruned when set out, excepting rho¬ 
dodendrons, laurel, azaleas and magnolias, 
which should never be pruned. After the 
first year, all trimming must be done immedi¬ 
ately after the shrub has ceased blossoming, 
as the flowers for one year grow on the new 
wood of the year before. 
Driving in Central Park early last Spring, 
I saw men cutting ruthlessly at the syringas, 
lilacs, deutzias, and other flowering shrubs. 
I could have wept, and longed to cry “Stop!” 
The shrubs certainly needed pruning, but it 
was a short-sighted policy to lose a season’s 
flowers by premature pruning, when by wait¬ 
ing three months the work could be done 
equally well and with better results. 
Standard box and box-edging should al¬ 
ways be set out in early spring, as they need 
a season’s growth to enable them to endure 
the first winter. 
Early in April some fine old manure, to 
which a small quantity of bone-meal and 
wood-ashes, about a pailful of each to a 
wheelbarrow of manure, have been added, 
should be dug into the ground about the 
roses, shrubs and vines ; the reward in in¬ 
crease of growth and quantity of flowers will 
be great. 
The spray machine must be looked over 
and put in order in earliest spring, and the 
various insecticides provided in advance. 
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