Chapter 1
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MAKING A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS
_THE HOUSE & GARDEN "MAKING" BOOKS_
It is the intention of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which _Making a Garden of Perennials_ is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home-maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication are the following: _Making a Rose Garden; Making a Lawn; Making a Tennis Court; Making a Fireplace; Making Paths and Driveways; Making a Rock Garden; Making a Garden with Hotbed and Coldframe; Making Built-in Bookcases, Shelves and Seats; Making a Garden to Bloom This Year; Making a Water Garden; Making a Poultry House; Making the Grounds Attractive with Shrubbery; Making a Naturalized Bulb Garden_; with others to be announced later.
Making a Garden of Perennials
_By_ W. C. EGAN
NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912
Copyright, 1912, by McBRIDE, NAST & CO.
Published June, 1912
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION 1
PREPARING THE BEDS 7
WINTER MULCHING 20
SUMMER MULCHING 23
PLANT COMBINATIONS 30
WEEDING 34
LISTS OF DEPENDABLE PERENNIALS:
OF GENERAL EXCELLENCE 36
FOR SHADY POSITIONS 49
FOR DRY SOILS 50
FOR WET SOILS 51
ALPINES, OR ROCK PLANTS 51
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS _Frontispiece_
Facing Page
A COLONY OF GERMAN IRIS 4
SWEET ROCKET AGAINST A FOLIAGE BACKGROUND 12
PEONIES 24
CANTERBURY BELLS AND FOXGLOVE 30
_ANEMONE JAPONICA_ 38
_PHLOX PANICULATA_ 46
SWAMP MALLOW, GAILLARDIA AND _CAMPANULA PERSICIFOLIA_ 50
MAKING A GARDEN OF PERENNIALS
INTRODUCTION
The successful garden has a permanent basis. There must be some flowers that appear year after year, whose position is fixed and whose appearance can be counted on. The group classed as perennials occupies this position and about flowers of this class is arranged all the various array of annuals and bulbs. These last act as reinforcements in rounding out the garden scheme.
Perennials are plants that live on year after year if the conditions surrounding them are congenial.
Trees and shrubs are perennials, of course; in these the stems are woody, but we are considering only those known as herbaceous perennials, having stems of a more or less soft texture that, with the exception of a few evergreen species, die back each fall, new ones appearing the following spring.
Quite a number of them are too tender to be generally grown as hardy perennials, but those that bloom freely the first year--like the snapdragon--are treated as annuals, discarding them when the season is ended.
Some biennials--those that do not bloom until the second year, and then die--may be placed among the perennials and considered of their class, because they seed so freely at the base of the parent plant and bloom the following year, that their presence in the border is nearly always assured. The only thing necessary to do is to transplant those not in the situation you desire them to bloom in. _Rudbeckia triloba_, one of the Black-eyed Susan type, is not only a good example of this class, but a charming plant that all should grow, and, moreover, it is a very accommodating one, doing splendidly in semi-shady places, such as north of buildings or under weeping trees like the rose-flowered Japanese weeping cherry. It is at home in full sunshine where it will form a broadly rounded, bushy plant about three feet in diameter and, when in full bloom, with its myriad of black-eyed flowers, it can dispel the worst case of melancholia a dyspeptic ever enjoyed. It requires a good open, rather light soil to do itself justice. If lifted when in full bloom, put into a ten-inch pot, well soaked at the roots, and set aside for a few hours away from sun and wind, it will last for two weeks as a porch or house plant.
We hear a good deal about the gardens of our grandmothers, perennial gardens, in which the plants outlived the flagstones at the house door.
With a few exceptions, perennials are not long-lived. The gas plant, peonies, some of the iris, day lilies, and a few others, seem permanent.
The usual run require to be taken up about every two or three years and divided. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, the roots have exhausted all the food within reach and, again, the main crown, from which spring the blooming shoots, dies from exhaustion. At the outer edge of this decay is generally a fringe of "live matter" which, if taken up, separate from the decayed center, divided, and reset in good soil, will rejuvenate itself, and soon form a new plant.
In unfavorable sections the Texas gaillardia will lose its crown during winter, and the anxious novice watches impatiently in the spring for its reappearance, and finally digs it up only to find that while the crown is decayed the roots are alive, and here and there, on these, new plant buds are forming which, if not disturbed, would soon make good plants, probably not placed, however, just where wanted. Nurserymen often avail themselves of this peculiarity and increase their stock by taking up a plant, cutting the roots into small sections, and growing them separately.
We must remember that nine-tenths of the plants we grow are exotic--natives of distant parts and climes--coming from various atmospheric conditions, and from all kinds of soil. We bring them into our garden and grow them all under one climatic influence and in the one kind of soil we happen to possess. Certainly we cannot expect uniform success with all of them. You might as well bring into one room unlettered natives of distant climes and expect them all to enter into a general conversation. Even in gardens quite near each other, their permanence varies. I cannot grow, successfully, any of the boltonias, while within a quarter of a mile of me, in a friend's garden, they grow like weeds. Our soil is the same, and one would suppose that the climatic conditions were, still the fact remains. I merely mention this so that any novice finding that he cannot grow some plants as well as others near him, may not feel lonesome in his grief. It is, however, a good plan, when a plant supposedly easy to grow, fails to materialize, to try it in another part of your own garden, and if it does not do well there, discard and forget it--the world is full of good things.
Due to the fact of the perennial's habit of annual recurrence the cultural directions are different from the flowers of but a season's bloom. There are some vital fundamentals that every gardener should know and some short cuts to success that every one may know. Since perennials, then, form the very kernel of the garden these are things of first importance in the growing of flowers and will be here elaborated sufficiently to give the reader an impetus that will carry him at a bound into the inner circle of the garden mysteries.
PREPARING THE BEDS
Do we want a successful flower bed--one that our neighbors will envy--or one in which the plants are struggling to exist? If we want the former--and who does not?--we must give our plants good pasturage. They are as fond of the fat of the land as we are, and, since they gladden our hearts with their radiant blooms, we should treat them fairly. And how? By giving them a good, deep soil for their root-run, not only rich in food, but loose and friable.
Most all virgin soils contain ample plant food, but the deeper part lacks the result of the action of air, sun and frost, and the natural humus of decayed leaves and grasses. The plant food it contains is "uncooked"--that is, not ready for plant assimilation. Therefore, the beds to contain your perennials should be dug at least two feet deep--three is better--and good garden soil, or soil from a corn-field or any hoed crop where the weeds have been kept down, used to supplement all but the top layer one foot in depth. All of this applies to tree and shrub holes also. This top layer of one foot in depth is apt to be in fair condition for immediate use and may be applied in the bottom of the bed, mixed with either fresh or rotted manure. The soil brought in may be mixed with old manure and placed on top.
A word about "old manure" is opportune here. Any manure that has been piled up for a year or more in a weed-infested corner and used on your grounds, especially on your lawn, is the best promoter of exercise I know of, and can keep you busy all summer dislodging the weeds that spring from the seed its bosom protected.
Of course, in a few sections where the soil is three feet deep--as I am told it is in the Illinois corn belt--all that is needed is to loosen up the soil to the depth mentioned, and add old manure. If the removal and bringing in of so much new soil is too harsh on the pocketbook we must proceed in a more economical way. If the soil is clayey in texture, mix with it sifted coal ashes or sand, and the coarser part of the ashes may be incorporated with the soil in the lower foot of bed. Remove the top one-foot layer, and set it aside; throw out the bottom soil to the remaining depth. Break it up finely and, in replacing it, besides the coal ashes or sand, add fresh strong manure, placing it in horizontal layers--say three inches of soil, and then a layer of manure four inches thick, when gently tamped down; or make the layers slantingly--say at an angle of about forty-five degrees. This will add humus to the soil, and allow air and moisture to penetrate it. Then put in the original top layer, mixing it with old manure. No fresh manure should touch the root of a plant. The fresh manure at the bottom of the bed will be well rotted by the time the roots reach it. After the top layer is put on you will find the bed raised up six to eight inches above the lawn, which is all right; it will settle enough in time. At all times break up the soil into fine particles, otherwise a lump of clay will remain a lump, and is of little value for plant use.
In making beds or shrub holes close to buildings having a cellar, one generally has to remove entirely all the soil, as that present usually consists of the deeper soil from the cellar excavation, mixed with bricks and mortar--few flowers root well in brick.
Place your flower beds along the walks, at the house, or along the lot lines, but do not clutter the center of your lawn with them. An open grass plot adds apparent size and dignity to any place. Give as much open sunlight as possible. Only early spring bloomers, like the hepaticas and trilliums, grow in what we call shade--though at the time of their growth and bloom they have the sunlight through the leafless tree branches. Do not make a bed where the drainage is bad or where water will stand in it during the winter. Tile draining will improve the bed under almost any circumstances.
Keep away from large trees. A vigorous elm, and a perennial cannot eat and drink out of the same dish and both grow fat. The perennial will be the one to suffer, mostly from lack of moisture. If you have planted near a tree or lack of space compels you to do so, take a sharp spade and, each spring, cut deeply all along the edge of the flower bed nearest the tree, and pull out from the bed all the small roots you can without disturbing the plants. This will help it for a time, but the elm will invade the bed again and the operation must be repeated. This applies to beds within eight or ten feet of a tree. For any bed much nearer, the cutting would be apt to injure the tree, and the growth in the bed would be a poor one.
Where the grounds are large and there is ample room for large beds at the borders, with an open lawn in front, flowering shrubs may be used as a background for perennials, but the growth of the shrubs requires frequent removals of the perennials further forward, and a frequent renewal of the plant food which the shrub is sharing. This method requires more watering on account of the double duty required of the soil.
Avoid fancy or geometrical shapes. They belong, when allowable, to formal gardens where tender bedding plants are used. Along walks, rectangular beds may be made, but against buildings or boundary lines, while the rear line may be comparatively straight, the front should be undulating, having long sweeping bays and promontories. No short curves should exist. They interfere with the lawn-mower. When it is desirable to face a boundary border with a walk, then, of course, the front line of a bed should be straight.
Some perennials require to be planted two feet apart, and in some, like peonies, three feet is close enough, for in time their tops will meet. Eighteen inches apart is enough to allow for the majority and some slender ones require but one foot. All this should be taken into consideration when determining the width of the bed.
Starting with the proposition that the average plant requires eighteen inches headroom, and that the first row may be planted six inches within the bed at the front--nine to twelve is better--and the second one back eighteen inches, and six from the back, we find that with rows two plants deep it requires a bed two feet and a half in width. This should be the narrowest allowance you should make. In a four-foot bed you can place them three deep, and one five and a half takes four plants. In other words, you increase your width in jumps of eighteen inches at a time. While this is not actually necessary, it is best and applies only to the widest and narrowest points. The intervening curved lines will vary from this measurement but it makes no difference, because you do not plant in straight rows from back to front as one would cabbages.
In planting at boundary lines or at buildings, the taller ones should be used at the back, but the semi-tall ones--say three feet in height--should occasionally be brought well toward the front in order to avoid stiffness and to add irregularity to the general effect. If a house or fence is at the back, flowering vines like the _Clematis paniculata_, or _C. flammula_, or any annual flowering vine, may be used here and there. In detached beds which may be seen from all sides, the taller plants are set in the middle.
The effect is much better if you plant in groups of four, six, or more of one kind. It relieves the effect of spottiness. Plant in an irregular manner so as to avoid stiffness or lumpiness, and let one group run in behind another. If you plant large groups in a pear-shaped form with the narrow stem end slightly curved and let the larger end of the adjoining pear-shaped group run up to the narrow stem of its neighbor, you will produce the effect I suggest. The plants you buy, being small, if planted as suggested will not occupy all the ground the first year. These spaces may be carpeted with annuals for a year or so, or planted with gladioli, lilies or _Hyacinth candicans_.
I will not attempt to discuss the fighting and clashing of colors sometimes seen in plantings. The acknowledged head of the house--she who is probably the one who desires the flower border--is generally an authority on pleasing color combinations.
Securely staking tall-growing plants is necessary if one desires neatness and effectiveness in the garden. We care for a plant twelve months in the year for the benefit we derive from its short season of bloom, and to allow it, then, to be sprawled upon the ground by passing storms seems cruel. Broom handles and ash rods, half an inch in diameter, used by basket makers, may be obtained from dealers in broom material. Bamboo canes are useful, as well as the painted stakes sold by seed houses. The stakes should be forced well down into the soil. Often, in dry weather when the ground is hard, they are not driven down far enough and the first hard rain softens the soil around them, and, if a strong wind exists, the plant may topple over and carry the stake with it. In tying them don't hug them as you would a long-lost brother; give them some natural freedom. In large groups, place the stakes around them, three or four feet apart, and string from stake to stake, running cross strings through the plants or between them. A single large plant generally requires at least three stakes. Do it before they are broken down by storms, for once broken it is hard to make a good job of it, especially if left down for some time. Then the growing ends turn up for light and harden in that bent condition.
If you raise the perennials yourself it is best to grow them one year in a reserve bed, say in the vegetable garden, because but very few will bloom the first year from seed. Purchased plants should have blossoms the first year, as they are supposed to be one-year-old seedlings or are divisions of old plants. These may be set out in the first position upon arrival. Seedlings in the reserve bed may be planted in rows, each row a foot apart, and the plants six inches apart in the rows; thus planted, they take up but little room and in the early fall or next spring they may be removed to their permanent quarters.
In transplanting, be sure to expose the roots as little as possible to the sun or drying winds. When plants arrive with the started foliage looking wilted, sprinkle them overhead and set them in a shady sheltered position for a while--say an hour. This will generally revive them enough to go on with your planting. If you have reason to suppose the plants were frosted in transit, set the box in a cool cellar over night. A gradual thawing out may rejuvenate them, while a sudden thawing is dangerous.
In planting, it often helps an amateur to take a few stakes and place one at each point he desires to set a plant. If you set six or more stakes, plant six or more plants, pulling up the stakes as you proceed to set out more. Make the holes in the bed wide enough to allow the roots to go in without crowding, and after filling in the soil, press it down firmly around the neck of the plant, and over the roots, and water well when all the bed is planted.
When dry, hot weather comes, and you think artificial watering necessary, soak the bed well and then let it alone for some time, although, in the evening, after a hot sunny day accompanied by a strong, drying wind, if the foliage looks wilted somewhat, a showering overhead is beneficial. The day after a good soaking it is well to go lightly over the bed with a hoe or rake and stir up the soil, breaking the crust produced by the watering. This makes a mulch that will conserve the moisture and protect the roots from the hot sun. Frequent slight waterings keep the moisture at the top and the roots are then inclined to grow upwards to meet it. If you then neglect to water, the soil soon becomes dry and the roots suffer.
WINTER MULCHING
When winter approaches, if you desire tidiness, cut the tops down (except evergreen-foliaged plants) even if the frost has not already done this work for you, and cover the bed with well-rotted manure, but it is really better to allow the tops to remain all winter, especially in the case of hollow-stemmed plants. Well-decayed manure needs but little going over in the spring, requiring only the removal of the foreign material and the straw chaff it may contain. What remains is generally the color of the soil, thus unnoticeable and acts as a mulch during the summer. Fresh manure may be used--in fact it is better, because the plants receive the benefit of the leachings, which is pretty well spent in old manure. In large grounds there is, however, considerable labor attached to the removal of this fertilizer in the spring, as it must be taken away for neatness' sake. While this manure has the greater part of its strength leached out, it is well worth saving for the humus still in it, and it may be dug in in the vegetable garden, or placed in a large flat pile about two feet high while still loosely spread. Melons, squash, pumpkins or similar sprawling vines may be grown in it. For each plant dump about one-half a wheelbarrow of good soil on the top, level and sow in it, or set out plants, if the seedlings are started elsewhere. The roots of these plants like the loose run the open manure allows. In extreme dry weather the growing squash or pumpkins should be well watered. In the fall this manure has become fine in texture and makes a splendid winter's mulch for snowdrops, crocus, etc.
Do not be in a hurry about removing the winter's covering when the first warm days of spring appear. More damage is done in early spring than in settled cold weather. It is the alternate freezing and thawing that does the most damage, and the surface water lying over the crowns of plants, which the frozen ground underneath does not allow to go down. I have seen roots of shallow-rooted plants, _Lobelia cardinalis_ for instance, growing in clayey soil, lying on the surface of the ground in spring--pried out by soil expansion. Part of the covering may be removed quite early but enough should remain to shade the ground.
SUMMER MULCHING
Shallow-rooted plants like the cardinal flower (_Lobelia cardinalis_) and the tall, fall-flowering hardy phloxes, dislike the hot sun beating down on their roots. Being surface rooters, and at the same time fond of moisture, they suffer when the surface soil is dried out. They should have a summer mulch to intercept the radiation of moisture from the soil.
The spent manure I mentioned as fine for covering bulbs, is splendid for this purpose and as it is of the same color as the soil, its presence is hardly noticeable; besides it adds humus. Almost any open material may be used, that will not offend our ideas of tidiness in appearance. Grass clippings from the lawn-mower may be used.
Some plants are late in appearing above ground in the spring, _Platycodons_ for instance, and there is danger of their being dug up by impatient amateurs who have either forgotten their presence or imagined they were dead and the ground vacant. It is well, therefore, to place in the fall some cane stakes at each plant or in a row around a group of this class to indicate their presence. I also place stakes at each lily as they generally occupy open spaces between perennials, and I seldom wish to disturb them if it becomes necessary to remove one of the perennials.