64 
House & Garden 
HRHPRM 
F. J. EMMERICH COMPANY, 36 West 37th Street, New York 
attnober (j§aUertesi 
3 WEST 56th STREET NEW YORK 
IMPORTERS OF SELECTED OLD MASTERS 
S. BERNARDINO 
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WALL PAPER. HARMONIOUS RESULTS ARE ASSURED BY ENLISTING 
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OR VISIT OUR STUDIOS. 
In Southern Gardens 
(Concluded from page 15) 
peony—and the garden at “Oxmoor,” 
the home of Wm. Marshall Bullitt, Esq., 
former Solicitor General under Mr. Taft. 
Olden “Oxmoor” 
Indeed “Oxmoor” boasts both a 
formal and an informal garden. The 
latter is especially in keeping with the 
spirit of this old colonial homestead, 
built in 1787 by Alexander Scott Bullitt, 
whose wife’s mother was a sister of 
Patrick Henry. 
The lovely old garden stretches its 
flowery length back of the house towards 
the open, rolling bluegrass country 
against which the splendid pecan tree, at 
the end of the grassy walk, shows 'up as 
straight as the-mast of a ship against 
the sky and ocean. The color scheme of 
this garden is very effective and easily 
taken in with the eye. It begins, nearest 
the house, by a, mist of pale lavenders 
and purples—foxgloves, Canterbury bells, 
iris—which melts into the blues of del¬ 
phiniums, of belladonna and of sage, 
then into yellows and at the far end, 
softened by distance, into pinks and reds. 
This flowery promenade is flanked at 
first by great lilac bushes, hydrangeas 
and syringas, which give way to a more 
austere growth of English yews, larches 
and junipers. About it all runs a privet 
hedge which seems to connect rather 
than to divide,' this satisfying, old- 
fashioned plot of’ bloom with the fertile 
farmland lying close about it. 
On the east side of the house lies the 
formal garden with its beds of fragrant 
roses and its rose-covered “summer 
houses,” as they are called in the south. 
On these arbors the -American Pillar 
Rose has been used very effectively. 
• As we began with Bacon, that wise old 
lover of gardens, so will we end with him, 
agreeing fervently, the more we see of 
gardens, that they are “indeed the purest 
of human pleasures; the greatest refresh¬ 
ment to the spirits of man, without 
which buildings and palaces are but 
gross handiworks.” 
The Bulbs for Fall Planting 
(Continued from page 25) 
with powdered sulphur; and it can¬ 
not hurt any sort of bulb, though it 
may be unnecessary with the common, 
sturdy things. It destroys bacteria; and 
as these we have always with us, in the 
plant world as well as in our own, let us 
fall upon them whenever we can. 
I have dwelt upon the bulb’s activity 
after its blossoming period for the sum¬ 
mer is over. Always keep in mind that 
this activity, this getting ready for next 
year, depends entirely upon the leaves. 
A bulb deprived of its leaves can do 
nothing against a coming summer; con¬ 
sequently it does not bloom when the 
coming summer arrives. Take great care 
therefore that nothing happens to the 
leaves while they are still green. Never 
cut them off, nor “trim up,” until they 
are unmistakably dead and dried up and 
brown. 
Anomalous as it may seem, the earliest 
flowering bulbs are the ones to plant last 
of all in the autumn. This is because it 
is desirable that they should do no grow¬ 
ing whatsoever after they are in the 
ground in the fall, but wait until spring 
to do it all. Being extremely hardy to 
severest cold, they are correspondingly 
susceptible to the slightest bit of warmth 
overhead; they are almost sure to start 
into growth during the warm, sunny days 
of October—which is a fatal mistake. 
Keep them out of the ground until, with 
the aid of a good almanac or with the 
government weather records, you can 
figure that real freezing is not more than 
four weeks away at the most. This 
allows two weeks’ leeway; for it is 
usually during about six weeks after 
planting that they confine their activity 
to root growth and underground affairs. 
The trick is to get them in in time to 
let them make root growth, but so late 
that top growth will not be quite ready 
to start up before hard freezing; and as 
it is impossible to figure on the weather 
with absolute certainty, work on the safe 
side by allowing not more than a month 
before cold weather ought to arrive. If 
it comes sooner and their six weeks of 
root growth is interrupted by frost, no 
harm is done, for they will resume work 
when spring comes. But if they are in 
the ground far enough ahead of frost to 
get a start at their tops, real injury from 
freezing is likely to come with it. 
Planting of bulbs may go on in the fall 
as long as the ground is unfrozen, but I 
would not advise beginning it before 
October except for some special things 
that should go in earlier; and with most 
things, the second week of the month is 
plenty of time. 
Mulch all hardy bulbs after the ground 
has frozen with 4" of straw or autumn 
leaves, held down by branches or by the 
cuttings from tall growing perennials. 
This mulch is to protect them from thaw¬ 
ing, not from freezing. Freezing never 
hurts a hardy plant; but alternate freez¬ 
ing and thawing does. 
Remove the mulch in the spring little 
by little, taking off the first layer by the 
first of March, in the latitude of New 
York. Be guided somewhat by the 
weather after this, remembering that the 
object is to prevent them starting prema¬ 
turely under the warmth of their winter 
blanket as the frost gradually leaves the 
ground. By the first of April you should 
have them quite uncovered, though it is 
well to keep the last bit of the mulch 
handy, to scatter over the tender shoots 
if a cold snap threatens. 
As to Kinds 
As to the kinds to plant, that is so 
largely a matter of personal preferences 
that generalities are perhaps more help¬ 
ful than anything very definite or positive 
can be. 
If you have nothing else you will at 
least want crocuses and daffodils—a 
clump of the latter and a “ribbon” of 
the former, running along a walk or 
edging a border. The tiniest garden will 
entertain these, and they are fit for the 
greatest. Then there are snowdrops and 
squills that can be “sown”—literally 
scattered just as seeds would be—on a 
lawn. With just these four, Spring is 
assured of an appropriate welcome. 
Snowdrops and squills are essentially 
bulbs for naturalizing, and should never 
be planted in any other way. They need 
the setting which only a lawn can give, 
for their beauty is so delicate that it is 
hardly realized if they have only the bare 
earth of the bed or border underneath 
them. Scatter them broadcast, either by 
handfuls or by flinging them from a 
basket; and plant each just where it 
falls. Thus you will have just the sort 
of grouping that Nature herself accom¬ 
plishes. 
Choose for snowdrops (Galanthus 
Elhvesi) a space that will be shaded 
during the heat of midsummer. They 
love the edges of big shrubs whose 
branches overhang and screen the ground 
from the sun; similarly, they thrive at 
the feet of trees, being perhaps at their 
best pictorially when growing under pine 
trees. In old gardens they are frequent 
under the edge of lilac or syringa hedges 
—great colonies that have spread front 
(Concluded on page 66) 
