118 
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House & Garden 
Where will guests sleep when every bed' 
room is occupied? A Northfield davenport 
solves that problem in so nice a way that 
you’ll be delighted with it. 
The low, soft cushion seat completely con' 
ceals a full size bed, yet gives no suggestion 
of its being anything but a gracefully 
designed, beautifully upholstered daven' 
port. For every Northfield is the work 
of a Master Designer, and each detail of 
construction and upholstery is carefully 
worked out under close supervision. 
An appropriate Northfield davenport suite 
may be chosen for any room. Beautiful 
period designs, deep cushioned overstuffed 
styles, and attractively decorated fibre pat' 
terns offer a wide field for selection at your 
favorite furniture store. 
where 
yJill theij 
sleep 
May we suggest that you ask your furni' 
ture dealer to show you the Northfield 
suites he has on exhibit? 
THE NORTHFIELD COMPANY 
Makers of' Good Furniture 
SHEBOYGAN ■ • WISCONSIN 
18 th Street at Martin Avenue 
" The Davenport with a Secret ” illus¬ 
trates many Northfield designs. A copy 
will be sent on request together with the 
name of the nearest Northfield dealer. 
Spring Plant Ordering 
(Continued from page 116) 
you can leave it to the nursery to 
decide. 
3— Specify that you wish to be 
informed at once if there is anything on 
the list that the nursery cannot sup¬ 
ply—otherwise you may find upon 
opening your shipment a red slip not¬ 
ing omissions when it may be too late 
to order from another place. 
4— Make it clear that you want no 
substitutions. It is better for you to 
do the substituting yourself if you 
have to. 
5— If you are a new customer, it 
often facilitates delivery if you send a 
number of references with the order. 
HEELING IN PLANTS 
If the plants cannot be planted at 
once, care should be given them. They 
should not be left waiting around in 
the boxes and crates. Potted plants 
tolerate this better than field-grown 
plants, I think, but in any case they 
may have been already several days 
or a week or more on the way. The 
plants either dry out or they become 
too heated in the paper wrappers and 
rot. 
If they are not planted at once, it 
is best to see that the roots are pro¬ 
tected by covering them with soil. The 
method of doing this neatly and cor¬ 
rectly is called heeling in. For shrubs 
and trees a shallow trench is dug and 
the plants heeled in in an upright or 
slightly reclining position. Nurseries 
usually tie plants in bundles of five 
or ten and they should be left tied 
when heeling them in. Each variety 
is kept together according to the label 
and the labels are not to be removed. 
Shrubs and trees have their own 
characteristics even in a dormant state 
but differences in flower color, as in 
the case of lilacs, for instance, can 
only be told by the label and sometimes 
the minor differences in plant varie¬ 
ties are not always easy to distinguish 
except by a person rather well versed 
in such matters. For a novice a label 
is indispensable. 
Herbaceous flower roots and plants 
are also heeled in in rows, each kind by 
itself and the label is placed at the 
beginning of each row. The unpack¬ 
ing should be done with care so that 
the various varieties of each kind of 
plant are not mixed up. 
Plants should be thoroughly wa¬ 
tered after being heeled in and not 
allowed to dry out if the weather is 
warm. It is advisable to unpack a 
shipment in sections to prevent roots 
from becoming dried out by the wind. 
In planting, as well, it is advisable not 
to unheel too many plants at once, and 
if at all windy it is advisable to cover 
any exposed roots with burlap or sack¬ 
ing. 
It is best to-heel the plants in in a 
shady spot convenient to the garden. 
Sometimes, it is best to use one of the 
garden borders for this purpose. 
If any of the plants arrive in a poor 
condition, if for instance the Lupines 
look a bit sick or the Anemones have 
lost their tops, it is much better to 
place them in a nursery row for re¬ 
covery than to plant them direct into 
the garden. 
These instructions may seem all 
too self-evident to you if you are a 
gardener but I wish I could tell you 
of all the various kinds of heeling in I 
have seen. Plants are sometimes quite 
literally dumped into a bit of hole, 
rows are astonishingly zigzag, earth is 
thrown so carelessly over that roots are 
left exposed. It is, then, a real joy to 
see a neat piece of heeling in. It is a 
help, too, in the subsequent planting 
of the garden. Plants have a good 
deal to stand on their journeys from 
place to place, uprooted as they are. 
It seems only fair to them to save 
them any abuse one can. The least 
one can do for them is to give them 
good treatment not only after they 
are actually planted but during this 
short time when they are awaiting 
their ultimate place in life. 
Elsa Rehmann 
SUNFLOWERS 
F OR two or three years past my 
garden has been the scene of a 
rather intensive and in some respects 
a parlously extensive study of the pro¬ 
saic sunflower I say prosaic advisedly, 
for although the more or less current 
misconception, that the flowers of the 
Helianthus, like great glowing eyes, ever 
turn toward the bright star of day in 
his ordered flight across the sky, has 
long lent in the thought of the un¬ 
observing a measure of romance, nay a 
touch of poetry even to the genus, yet 
after this more intimate acquaintance 
I can honestly concede neither quality 
as rightly belonging to it. I hold with 
those philosophers who teach that 
poetry has no traffic with the bizarre, 
the fantastic as such and even less 
with the merely gross and well-fed, to 
both which classes the sunflower in the 
main belongs. 
From remote infancy I had known 
(as who has not?) the occasional great 
sunflower of the annual garden, a ring 
of golden petals and a broad brown or 
yellow disk often measuring well over 
a span topping a gigantic buttressed 
column of pale green,. These Goliaths 
of the garden were of course included in 
my experimental planting. We call 
them Russian sunflowers now-a-days, 
and the reason for doing so is of the 
classic Irish type, namely because they 
have nothing whatever in common with 
that trouble country. They are grown 
there to be sure, as they are in many- 
other parts of Europe, for the sake 
of the oil content and the food value 
of the seeds, but Helianthus annus like 
all the fifty or so other members of 
the genus is a native of America. The 
best authorities regard South America, 
more particularly Peru, as the original 
home of the common annual Sun¬ 
flower, and there is good ground for 
believing that it was held in especial 
esteem by the ancient sun-worshippers. 
It is however a far cry from the older 
well known form of the flower to the 
beautiful varieties of the modern ex¬ 
perimenter. A considerable revival of 
interest in the sunflower has been 
brought in recent years owing to this 
development of new shapes and the 
remarkable extension of the color range. 
Beside the deep yellow we have been 
long familiar with we have now pale 
lemon yellows almost white in their 
general effect and at the opposite end 
of the scale deep orange yellow, true 
reds, and browns that are all but 
chocolate in hue. Perhaps the most 
striking are the parti-colored sorts, 
pale yellow petals toning into maroon, 
deep browns with glowing yellow tips. 
Then again a reddish zone will appear 
across each petal. The accompanying 
photograph shows seven blooms of vari¬ 
ous types. Possibly the most beautiful 
of these is the third from the right, a 
rich golden brown flower with narrow 
pointed petals. They are beautiful 
(Continued on page 120) 
