Chapter 10

For the North

For the South

INDEX

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE I. The open center.

PLATE II. The plan of the place.

PLATE III. Open-center treatment in a semi-tropical country.

PLATE IV. Subtropical bedding against a building. Caladiums, cannas, abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and other large stuff, with tuberous begonias and balsams between.

PLATE V. A subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of _Pennisetum longistylum_ (a grass) started in late February or early March.

PLATE VI. A tree that gives character to a place.

PLATE VII. Bedding with palms. If a bricked-up pit is made about the porch, pot palms may be plunged in it in spring and tub conifers in winter; and fall bulbs in tin cans (so that the receptacles will not split with frost) may be plunged among the evergreens.

PLATE VIII. A well-planted entrance. Common trees and bushes, with Boston ivy. on the post, and _Berberis Thunbergii_ in front.

PLATE IX. A rocky bank covered with permanent informal planting.

PLATE X. A shallow lawn pond, containing water-lilies, variegated sweet flag, iris, and subtropical bedding at the rear; fountain covered with parrot’s feather (_Myriophyllum proserpinacoides_).

PLATE XI. A back yard with summer house, and gardens beyond.

PLATE XII. A back yard with heavy flower-garden planting.

PLATE XIII. The pageant of summer. Gardens of C.W. Dowdeswell, England, from a painting by Miss Parsons.

PLATE XIV. Virginia creeper screen, on an old fence, with wall-flowers and hollyhocks in front.

PLATE XV. Scuppernong grape, the arbor vine of the South. This plate shows the noted scuppernongs on Roanoke Island, of which the origin is unknown, but which were of great size more than one hundred years ago.

PLATE XVI. A flower-garden of China asters, with border of one of the dusty millers (_Centaurea_).

PLATE XVII. The peony. One of the most steadfast of garden flowers.

PLATE XVIII. Cornflower or bachelor’s button. _Centaurea Cyanus_.

PLATE XIX. Pyracantha in fruit. One of the best ornamental-fruited plants for the middle and milder latitudes.

PLATE XX. A simple but effective window-box, containing geraniums, petunias, verbenas, heliotrope, and vines.

PLATE XXI. The king of fruits. Newtown as grown in the Pacific country.

PLATE XXII. Wall-training of a pear tree.

PLATE XXIII. Cherry currant.

PLATE XXIV. Golden Bantam sweet corn.

PLATE XXV. The garden radish, grown in fall, of the usual spring sorts.

EXPLANATION

It has been my desire to reconstruct the two books, “Garden-Making” and “Practical Garden-Book”; but inasmuch as these books have found a constituency in their present form, it has seemed best to let them stand as they are and to continue their publication as long as the demand maintains itself, and to prepare a new work on gardening. This new work I now offer as “A Manual of Gardening.” It is a combination and revision of the main parts of the other two books, together with much new material and the results of the experience of ten added years.

A book of this kind cannot be drawn wholly from one’s own practice, unless it is designed to have a very restricted and local application. Many of the best suggestions in such a book will have come from correspondents, questioners, and those who enjoy talking about gardens; and my situation has been such that these communications have come to me freely. I have always tried, however, to test all such suggestions by experience and to make them my own before offering them to my reader. I must express my special obligation to those persons who collaborated in the preparation of the other two books, and whose contributions have been freely used in this one: to C.E. Hunn, a gardener of long experience; Professor Ernest Walker, reared as a commercial florist; Professor L.R. Taft and Professor F.A. Waugh, well known for their studies and writings in horticultural subjects.

In making this book, I have had constantly in mind the home-maker himself or herself rather than the professional gardener. It is of the greatest importance that we attach many persons to the land; and I am convinced that an interest in gardening will naturally take the place of many desires that are much more difficult to gratify, and that lie beyond the reach of the average man or woman.

It has been my good fortune to have seen amateur and commercial gardening in all parts of the United States, and I have tried to express something of this generality in the book; yet my experience, as well as that of my original collaborators, is of the northeastern states, and the book is therefore necessarily written from this region as a base. One gardening book cannot be made to apply in its practice in all parts of the United States and Canada unless its instructions are so general as to be practically useless; but the principles and points of view may have wider application. While I have tried to give only the soundest and most tested advice, I cannot hope to have escaped errors and shortcomings, and I shall be grateful to my reader if he will advise me of mistakes or faults that he may discover. I shall expect to use such information in the making of subsequent editions.

Of course an author cannot hold himself responsible for failures that his reader may suffer. The statements in a book of this kind are in the nature of advice, and it may or it may not apply in particular conditions, and the success or failure is the result mostly of the judgment and carefulness of the operator. I hope that no reader of a gardening book will ever conceive the idea that reading a book and following it literally will make him a gardener. He must always assume his own risks, and this will be the first step in his personal progress.

I should explain that the botanical nomenclature of this book is that of the “Cyclopedia of American Horticulture,” unless otherwise stated. The exceptions are the “trade names,” or those used by nurserymen and seedsmen in the sale of their stock.

I should further explain the reason for omitting ligatures and using such words as peony, spirea, dracena, cobea. As technical Latin formularies, the compounds must of course be retained, as in _Pæonia officinalis_, _Spiræa Thunbergi_, _Dracæna fragrans_, _Cobœa scandens_; but as Anglicized words of common speech it is time to follow the custom of general literature, in which the combinations æ and œ have disappeared. This simplification was begun in the “Cyclopedia of American Horticulture” and has been continued in other writings.

L. H. BAILEY.

ITHACA, NEW YORK, January 20, 1910.