EARLY GARDEN r I A HERE has not been that severity of 
ACTIVITIES A winter here in the East that we have 
been accustomed to endure with poor pa¬ 
tience. Indeed, winter has been mildly dallying with us. Now a 
tantalizing warm day that made us feel that summer was at hand; 
again a rigorous low temperature that presaged months of cold. 
The false alarms of spring have hardened us. It is the old story 
•of “Wolf, wolf!” and most of us will cease to be excited over 
spring’s awakening until we find a bluebird on a date when the 
calendar says winter is actually past. 
But in the magazine world spring always comes at the same 
time. No matter what the weather prophet says, the planting 
time comes regularly at an appointed date. Within the office it is 
April in February—a real April that is entered each morning and 
left at night, as we leave the winter when we enter the tropic 
atmosphere of a greenhouse. It has its drawbacks, it is true, for 
Christmas begins in August, and is quite passed and gone by 
December twenty-fifth. There is, however, a longer period of 
summer weather with us. We enjoy both the false and the true 
time of flowers and growing things. 
In a way one looks backward and forward at the same time. 
Just now we are attacking those early gardening activities, and 
the essence of past springs rising so strong in memory make the 
experience real. Out of those gardening experiences we wish to 
dwell upon one thing. We wish to give a weak second to the in¬ 
terpretation of Walter Prichard Eaton and agree with him for 
his emphasis of the humbler joys of gardening. 
The hotbed! Could the author have found anything more in¬ 
herently ugly to the fastidious cherisher of delicately perfumed, 
daintily hued blossoms? Yet for all its ugliness it is the garden 
toad with the jewel in its head. Within the small compass of the 
garden frame goes on the intense struggle of nature into life. In 
the open ground the phenomena seem less wonderful, less active, 
than beneath the dew-sparkled garden glass. Once you work the 
alchemy of the hotbed ; once you find yourself master of the incle¬ 
ment spring, you will have passed your novitiate, and the glory 
of fruit and blossom will seem to be your more intimate creation. 
¥ 
' J^HE abominable bedding plants must 
ASTRONOMICAL 
GARDENING A have been the common blot on the 
English landscape when Cowper wrote. 
Strange that they should persist until today! As early as “The 
Garden” was written, 1785, this style of planting was inveighed 
against. He speaks of such gardening as the work of the “insipid 
citizen" “plying a misspent industry at his uncouth, ill-chosen task 
of arranging suns and moons upon the lawn,” planning grotesque 
arrangements until he had “fairly laid the Zodiac in the dust.” 
That is rather a heavy arraignment of the case, but it deserves 
severe condemnation. With all the possibilities of smooth and 
rolling lawn why will people still persist in mutilating a pleasant 
green surface with fantastically worked designs as disfiguring as 
a goitre, having as much connotation of naturalness as that un¬ 
fortunate affliction ? If House dr Garden can accomplish the de¬ 
struction of the obsession to cut up clean lawn space with beds of 
foliage plants, cannas, etc. ; can sink forever the outworn rowboat 
doing service before the house as a container of scarlet geraniums ; 
can put an end to the astronomical gardening - , it will be accom¬ 
plishing the successful end to a campaign against these abuses 
started over a century and a quarter—goodness knows how long 
before that—ago. With all the opportunities offered by natural¬ 
istic planting, with decent formal arrangements, with the grace¬ 
ful possibilities of borders and edgings, shun the isolated bed as 
though it were plague-infested. It has been a garden disease too 
long, and should not be perpetual — or perpetrated—anv longer. 
^^N May 5th, 6th and 7th the National Con- 
CITY 
PLANNING V-/ ference on City Planning will meet in 
Chicago to discuss the plans presented for the 
ideal development of the outlying districts of a rapidly growing 
city. The outcome of this discussion should be of particular in¬ 
terest to House <5” Garden readers in these days of mushroom 
growth. It is but a little while since what were rural districts 
with broad lawns and large trees have become crowded sections 
of various great cities now characterized by erratic styles, and, due 
to pressure, showing a layout devoid of plan. In our largest 
cities sections of this character are now in the stage of replanning. 
Experts are trying to make order out of the chaos: to add some 
beauty to the ugly conglomeration. 
. .How much better it would be if instead of the spasmodic 
growth that typifies so much of our present building a purposive 
plan might prevail. It might be one way of correcting that 
change in character evident in so many residential sections. In 
American cities there is almost no permanent home district. 
Dwellings are no more fixed than the tents of the Bedouins, and 
the constant inroads of trade interests keep pushing them about 
from one place to another. There seems to have been no allow¬ 
ance for growth along regular lines in the old plans, which prob¬ 
ably accounts for the spasmodic outgrowth of various sorts of 
districts here and there without purpose and of little duration. It 
is this fugitive quality, this fickleness of character that the city 
planning conference may provide against in new work and per¬ 
haps give some general instruction for curative measures. 
The plan that was submitted some time ago for solution is 
given in brief below : 
1. The tract is assumed to contain 500 acres of land 
located on the outskirts of a growing city of about 
500,000 population, four miles from the center of the 
city but entirely within its corporate limits. 
2. The rate and direction of growth of the city is as¬ 
sumed to be such that the tract when fully developed 
will be absorbed by the demand for building lots within 
a reasonably short period and at prices sufficient to repay 
the original investment in the land of $2,500 an acre, to¬ 
gether with the cost of development, interest, taxes, 
selling cost and a fair profit. 
3. The demand is assumed to be mainly for the erec¬ 
tion of dwellings and for such other purposes as are 
normally incidental to such development — retail stores, 
local places of amusement, schools, churches, etc. 
4. In order to avoid discrepancies in legal conditions 
it is to be assumed that developments of private property 
are to be governed by the requirements defined in the 
Building Code approved by the National Board of Fire 
Underwriters and in the model tenement house law mod¬ 
ified to a housing law. 
5. The general plan should include: (a) The loca¬ 
tion of streets and other proposed public properties. 
(b) The development of private lands in accordance 
with the general plan and with such control as could 
properly be exercised by ordinance or statute under the 
most favorable constitutional limitations in the United 
States, (c) The recognition of such control as might 
reasonably be expected to be exercised by public-spirited 
land companies or other owners of real estate through 
restrictions in the deeds of lots. 
It is not the purpose of the conference to conduct the usual 
competition and select one design which seems best fitted to cope 
with the situation. It is rather the idea to combine the excellence 
of ideas submitted by many, and to get a variety of suggestions. 
(304) 
