Conducted by 
A HARDY PERENNIAL HEDGE 
I have just finished a house, Colonial in style, having a low 
terrace at one side, some forty feet long and twenty wide, divided 
in the center by a brick walk leading from the house. The situa¬ 
tion is too bleak and exposed for box, but I am anxious for a rather 
low hedge effect. It is a summer home and only summer effect is 
desired. Is there some hardy perennial that might be used ? 
J. B. B. 
The nearest approach to a hedge-like effect, without artificial 
training and unusual cultivation, to be found among the hardy 
perennials is in the gas plant or burning bush, Dictamnus albus, 
sometimes called Fraxinella, an Asiatic plant of unquestioned 
hardiness and very long-lived. The flowers are white in showy 
racemes held well above the foliage. It is slow to increase in size 
but finally attains a height of three feet and nearly as broad. The 
plant is densely covered to the base with dark green leathery 
leaves, holding their color until severe frosts, and standing up 
against storms, without staking. Unless the soil on your terrace 
is good, you should dig out and refit with good soil a trench two 
feet deep and wide. Buy both the white and rosy purple form 
and plant together indiscriminately. Cut back in the fall and 
cover the crowns with manure and the plants will outlive your 
generation and the next. 
MAKING BEDS FOR PERENNIALS 
I want to make a bed for some perennials. How shall I go 
to work about it ? The natural soil is a clay loam. I can get 
quite a quantity of manure chips from a neighboring cow pasture 
if necessary. J. C. H. 
The chances are that your soil is rich in plant food, but this 
plant food is not immediately available, for want of the action of 
air and frost upon it—and it also probably lacks humus. 
A thorough trenching, with the addition of manure, will put the 
soil in proper condition. 
The cow chips you speak of have but little manurial value, its 
substance having been washed out by the rains. When pulver¬ 
ized it may be used to lighten up the soil. Were you making the 
bed in the fall, and planting in the spring, we would advise the use 
of fresh strawy manure all through the bed, as you thus retain all 
its original strength, and by the time the plants reached it, it 
would be decayed enough not to injure them. 
We presume you intend planting as soon as the bed is made, 
in which case you had better use well-rotted manure in the first 
foot of depth. Horse manure is better where the soil is of a clayey 
nature and cow manure—which is a cold manure—where sand 
predominates. 
Stake out your bed, then dig out to the depth of one foot a 
space clear across the bed and four to six feet wide, and carry it 
to the other end. Call this pile No. I. 
Then dig out at the bottom of this space, one foot deep and two 
to three wide. Take this also to the other end and put it in 
another pile, called No. 2. You now have a space four to six feet 
wide of the top soil removed and two to three of the bottom. 
Now place some strawy fresh manure in the bottom, close to the 
W. C. EGAN 
end where you commenced to dig, then add some soil from the 
bottom layer that has been uncovered, then more manure, trying 
to lay the manure in a slanting position so as to reach from the 
bottom to the top of this one foot layer, the object being to allow 
the air to pass down through this spongy layer and act upon the 
mineral elements in the soil. Continue making alternate layers, 
say six inches thick, until you have exhausted the uncovered lower 
foot of soil. You now commence again upon the surface soil, 
digging it again one foot deep, throwing it upon the mixture of 
soil and manure, but incorporating with it well-rotted manure. 
You need not use so much manure here and may lay it in horizon¬ 
tal layers; you are thus keeping the original top soil at the top, 
which is better than that below, only because of the presence of 
some humus from decaying vegetable matter and the action of 
frost and air. 
Continue until you come to the end, when pile number two is 
placed at the bottom and number one at the top. 
Your bed will be much higher than its surroundings, but will 
settle in time. 
If you have reason to believe that the lower foot of soil is very 
poor and you can obtain good soil at a reasonable figure—corn 
field soil is good—cart all or part of the lower foot away, and 
replace with new soil; but in this case use the original top soil for 
the bottom. If you are making the bed in the lawn and have no 
use for the sod removed, chop it up and put it in the bottom. 
This makes a rich bed, but perennials remain in one place a long 
time and opportunities of remanuring do not often occur. How¬ 
ever, when any space of a perennial bed is empty through death 
of the plants or removal for division, it is best to add more manure, 
and if the plants have been in place several years and especially 
if the same kind is growing back again, it is advisable to remove 
some of the soil entirely and replace with fresh. 
A HARDY CLEMATIS 
What vine is it that has small, sweet scented white flowers 
exactly like the Clematis pamculata, but blooms much earlier. 
Is it a variety ? Mrs. S. E. 
No it is Clematis flammula, from Southern Europe, perfectly 
hardy but not as strong a grower as the Japanese Clematis panic- 
ulata. 
MAN-OF-THE-EARTH—A HARDY VINE 
A neighbor has a moon-vine that is a hardy perennial, bearing 
white flowers. I want to get one but don’t know what to order as 
she does not know its name. Can you help me ? R. R. B. 
It is probably Ipomoea panduratus,ohzncA\e& Man-of-the-earth, 
on account of the shape of its roots. It is a native of the United 
States. 
A SCREEN FOR A CATCH-BASIN COVER 
What can I do to hide an ugly-looking catch-basin cover on my 
lawn? K. A. 
Plant Spircea Van Houtteii around it, setting the plants four 
feet apart, except at one side when you allow five. When cleaning 
the catch-basin, tie back the shrubs. 
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