68 
House & Garden 
THE CUTTING GARDEN 
Flowers for the House Should be Grown Where They May be Gathered 
Easily and TV here Their Loss Will Not be Felt 
H. STUART ORTLOFF 
T HE garden designer who strives for 
an effective pictorial arrangement of 
bloom for an entire season frequently 
has to contend with flower cutting on a large 
enough scale to mar his achievement. Some 
might consider such a thing of little im¬ 
portance, and remark that such is the prime 
reason for a garden. In a few instances they 
might be right, but in the majority of cases 
a garden is planned as a setting for the 
house, or as an outdoor living room, a place 
of joy and a tiling of great beauty. One 
dislikes very much to have their settings 
bereft of some adjunct which they deemed 
necessary enough to use, and when such a 
thing is done they feel much the same as if 
someone had casually strolled into their 
home and removed several choice pictures, a 
lampshade, or some other thing which ap¬ 
pealed to them at the moment. 
Of course there are times when flowers 
are most abundant in our gardens, when 
there is a wealth of certain varieties, or 
when picking will increase the growth and 
beauty of some plants, but have you ever 
noticed that such things are rarely the ones 
which will suit the picker’s purpose? Ju¬ 
dicious picking, a few here, another there 
and so on. is helpful to any garden, for it 
removes the danger of flowers going to 
seed; but so few people pick judiciously 
they demolish the entire bed with their 
choice. I remember one instance in par¬ 
ticular where the crowning glory of one of 
my gardens was a few glorious spires of 
gold-banded lilies. Imagine my sorrow 
when I came into the garden one afternoon 
to revel in those lilies, and found them 
gone! True, they were lovely as they 
graced the fireplace in the living room, but 
my garden seemed a place of desolation. 
Another instance was when a Japanese 
butler stripped the leaves from a choice 
peony to garnish a dinner table. 
Now, as a solution for such difficulties 
and a hundred more of kindred nature I 
present the feasibility of the cutting gar¬ 
den, a place where an abundance of all 
kinds of bloom and foliage may be picked 
indiscriminately for every occasion, and still 
allow the main flower garden to rejoice in 
its pristine glory. 
First of all, such a garden should be 
located in a convenient and accessible place 
so that when only a few blooms are wanted 
one will not have to go to the ends of the 
earth to secure them. It is well to have the 
cutting garden conveniently near the main 
flower garden, but one should be very sure 
that the route to it does not lead through 
the main garden, otherwise the temptation 
might prove too strong to overcome. It might 
be joined to the main garden, at the end 
of some small path, a cross axis, or it 
might be a part of the nursery and proving 
ground where small plants are raised and 
the hundred and one experiments are tried 
before they are entrusted to the more im- 
(Continued on page 100) 
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Mignonette 
Cutting gardens may be beautiful as well as use fid; it is only 
necessary that they be so planted as to stand more or less con¬ 
stant depletion. The plan above is suggested as one that is 
both effective and conveniently arranged. 
