A Beginner’s First-Year Garden 
HOW A GARDEN WAS MADE TO GROW IN A YEAR SO THAT IT HAD THE LOOK OF BEING 
PLANTED YEARS AGO-THE PLANTS THAT PROVED SUCCESSES AND HOW THEY WERE ARRANGED 
BY Louise Taylor Davis 
Photographs by the author 
N OW' that the splendor has departed from our 
garden, the Amateur Gardener and I can reflect 
on the triumphs and failures of last season. A year 
of gardening seems to divide itself naturally into four 
periods. There's the period of Expectation, beginning, 
usually, as early as January, when your enthusiastic 
garden lover pores over catalogues, draws numerous 
weird little diagrams on every available scrap of paper, 
and goes about with his brain filled with thoughts of 
seeds and plants and soils and fertilizers. Then, about 
the first of April, ensues the period of Preparation — 
a time of digging and planting, of alternate hopes and 
fears, of paving the way, by the sweat of your brow* 
and the ruin of your finger-nails, to the wonders 
which are to follow. Gradually the days wear on. the 
sun feels a little warmer on your bending back as 
you work in your garden beds, the birds arrive, famil¬ 
iar little green things begin to stick their heads up 
into the air and look around — and there you are. 
landed suddenly in the period of Realization. Of 
course your struggles and labors aren't over then, and 
you can't sit back and rest. You’ve got to water and 
weed and thin out and cultivate, and do lots of other 
th'ngs and keep on doing them. But what do you 
care for that when one flowery miracle is rapidly suc¬ 
ceeding another, and you are finding, to your rapt 
delight, that the roses ar’e going to do well, after all, 
and the clematis has grown an astounding number of 
feet. This period of Realization is the time to store 
away enough memories to brighten up a bit the last 
period — that of Medita¬ 
tion. The maker of a first 
year garden can turn his 
meditations to very good 
account by trying earnest¬ 
ly to determine just where 
and why his garden failed 
or succeeded. That’s what 
the Amateur Gardener 
and I are doing now 
with an eye to the future. 
Last summer was our 
fourth summer in our 
home, and, to our shame 
be it said, the first sum¬ 
mer we have had a gar¬ 
den. At the time the 
house was built there 
were already twelve- 
young peach trees on the 
place, and as soon as we 
had moved in we set out 
six little Lombardy pop¬ 
lars, three on each side 
of the house. These 
trees and the grass on the 
new lawn constituted all 
our planting for that season. The two following 
years we went out in the spring and half-heartedly 
planted, in beds near the house, a few of the flowers 
which generally constitute the gardens of people 
with no imagination—sweet peas, nasturtiums, and 
the like. Having put the seeds into the ground and 
patted the earth down over them, we considered our 
whole duty done, and left the rest to the flowers 
themselves. The results were not brilliant. Then 
on a day last IMarch, when, for the first time, spring 
was in the air, the Amateur Gardener and I re¬ 
formed. We stood on the porch and surveyed our 
surroundings discontentedly. 
‘‘This place looks bare,” said the Amateur Gar¬ 
dener. “We ought to have bushes and vines and 
things.” He waved his hand vaguely in the direc¬ 
tion of our uninteresting back yard. 
“What we need is a garden,” I said. “But it’s 
such hard work.’’ 
“If you will, I will,” said the Amateur Gardener. 
“Work, I mean. Let’s make this place look like 
something.” 
We shook hands solemnly on our compact, and 
went in the house and unearthed an old seed cata¬ 
logue. From that moment to this the garden has 
been the subject uppermost in our minds and most 
prominent in our conversation. 
The chances of making the place “look like 
something,” as the Amateur Gardener had said, did 
not seem very promising. I think we both had 
in our minds at first, as a 
sort of vague, half- 
formed ideal, the velvety 
lawns, the masses of neat¬ 
ly clipped shrubbery, and 
the mathematical flower 
beds that one encounters 
along a well-kept subur¬ 
ban street. Inasmuch as 
we don’t live on a well- 
kept suburban street, but 
on the outskirts of a little 
village which is so far 
from the city as to be 
almost in the real country, 
we soon realized that we 
must cast aside our neat 
suburban ideal and, to the 
best of our abilities, 
evolve a garden scheme 
which should be in har¬ 
mony with our surround¬ 
ings. 
The conditions con¬ 
fronting us were rather 
unusual. Our lot is on 
the slope of a hill, and at 
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The plan and 
arrangement of 
the first year 
garden 
The cottage fairly demanded a vine covering which morning glories and clematis 
well supplied 
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