March, i p i 6 
17 
Biplane view of the estate of James Speyer at Scarboro, N. Y. 
WHY NOT YOUR OWN NURSERY? 
Suggestions for the Garden That Goes 
Bald and the Garden That is Crowded 
A LL flowers have their faults— 
for gardeners are a fallible lot 
and flowers unruly. Like people, 
some are more faulty than others, 
and, similarly like people, the faults 
of one may perfectly well be the 
faults of another. That is, the same 
faults are common to all flower gar¬ 
dens, even though some may not 
show them. 
Perhaps the fault most commonly 
found in the average garden is a 
bare spot here and there. By this 
I do not mean a space left untreated, 
but a real bare spot where something 
is intended — made bare through a 
failure, or through a little neglect at 
a crucial time, or through miscalcula¬ 
tion of one sort or another—the kind 
of vacancy that calls attention to it¬ 
self, and that the gardener apolo¬ 
gizes for whenever he passes it. 
Such spots are almost sure to ap¬ 
pear even in well regulated garden¬ 
ing; for some plants that have done 
well in previous seasons fail unex¬ 
pectedly and either die altogether, or 
grow so poorly that they do not fill 
the niches allotted to them. So there 
is just one way to be sure of avoid¬ 
ing them; have a garden nursery— 
a place where flowers are raised for 
the one purpose of filling in the 
GRACE TABOR 
An old house with a proper setting of trees, shrubs 
and vines-the residence of F. S. Olmsted at Brook¬ 
line, Mass. Here the natural and artificial features 
are in their correct relation, supplementing each other 
vacancies that are bound to arise. 
The Home Nursery 
Growers of fruit always have 
these nurseries; one is maintained 
usually on a large estate for the pur¬ 
pose of reinforcing shrubberies or 
shade plantings, if accidents of 
weather deplete these; but I have 
come across few indeed given over 
to flowers. Which makes me won¬ 
der, for though the flower garden 
is of the summer only, and though 
flowers may be grown quickly com¬ 
pared to fruit trees or shrubs, surely 
there is nothing that the gardener 
ever wants more intensely than he 
wants a good plant in the flower 
garden, if a poor one develops. 
Do not wait for the need; antici¬ 
pate it. Set aside a small space in 
the garden, a border along its path, 
or the space where the hotbeds are, 
and get under way certain substi¬ 
tute plants which may go into this 
space when the weather permits. 
One packet of seeds of the right 
thing will assure plants enough to 
do no end of substituting. It is not 
necessary to have a variety for this; 
all that is needed is sturdy, sure 
growth, of a floriferous nature— 
and bearing flowers not too strong 
