Plant Gardens 101

Once you choose the site of your rock garden, select the rocks you want to use and have the soil prepared, you are ready to start construction. The first question you might as is when is the best time of year to make a rock garden? The rocks and soil may be handled at any time except when the ground is frozen, but the summer months offer the longest period of freedom from planting rush, and then the soil is dry and easily handled.

Then there will be autumn rains to make the soil firm and winter frost to settle the rocks and planting can best be done the following spring. The first thing you need to do is to dig off the existing topsoil (the first foot of earth) and remove the roots of all weeds and grasses. Much of this soil may be used in backfilling if all roots are sifted out. On this base the large bulky rocks should be laid, each packed around with soil, well rammed, and topped by several chinker stones, large water features, outdoor fountains, or garden statuary before the next are put into place.

As the program for procedure has already been arranged, the work of laying up the rocks can proceed. Now is the time to worry over the details of the outline of the structure. You may have decided the general shape of the area in advance and may even have a plan at hand to give the principal elevations and major masses. However, you must decide the details of the shape of each crag and ravine as the rock garden is being constructed. (more…)

To make your rock garden pleasing to the eye, you should seek out the greatest variety of plants. At the same time, you have to look at keeping a unified but not uniform effect. It is possible to make the planting too wild and unkempt, but more often a rock garden looks entirely too much dressed and too well tended to represent the moods of nature. There is a certain unity and plan in the arrangement of the wild flowers of the fields, and this intangible scheme should be your guide in planning the placing.

With all this striving for variety in unity, it is a good idea to keep the flower masses of the same date of bloom somewhat apart, getting fewer of the flower combinations than is planned for a flower border. The requirements of finished pictorial composition are less desired here, the effect being decidedly more toward the very uneven and picturesque, with the tenets of the art of manmade pictures as little in evidence as possible. (more…)

Ever since the great plague of the phylloxera in the 19th century, the ground was permeated by those destructive aphids and it remained quite impossible to grow the old-style vines. American vines, however, were more resistant to the phylloxera, though the wine produced from their grapes was considered inferior. To get the best of both worlds, American stocks (riparia) or, more frequently, hybrid stocks bred by crossing American with native vines, were planted and when they were established the native vines were grafted on to them.

A great deal of work has been done on establishing the best stocks compatible with a soil that is so high in calcium. The grafts were made at ground level and were protected by heaping earth up around the plants. Big growers began to use bench grafting, planting cuttings that are already grafted in nurseries. (more…)

When planning a garden, it is good advice to start with an open mind. A gardener should look for suggestions from the site, not omitting to take into account its immediate environment. The best gardens are personal in that they take their character from their makers.

When experts are asked for suggestions for a style of garden for a particular plot they are often tempted to reply “the common sense style” because there is no exact treatment for a given plot laid down by rule. The gardener may not recognize the possibilities of a garden fountain, water wall fountain, or outdoor waterfalls at first glance, but this is possible after carefully studying it.

Straight lines, for example, are useful in an oblong shaped plot of limited size. Without magnifying the problems associated with planning, it must be said that the more knotty problems arise most often in connection with plots of irregular shapes or contours, or plots unfavorably conditioned with regards to the aspect and surroundings. (more…)

When a stream intersects the garden, this requires more work. You should use general treatment in expanding the water area considerably. One of the ways in which you can do this is to create a lily pond in that part of the garden beyond the brook, having an inlet and an outlet, thus securing water circulation.

Bays should be formed on the near side. Communication across the stream may be by means of a simple bridge, or stepping stones if the water is shallow. You should resist the temptation to give a “rustic” character to his bridge and think carefully about adding patio statuary, large fountains, or indoor wall fountains that are best left indoors. It should be a plain affair, well and firmly built, as befits its purpose, and with a hand-rail on either side.

There is a type of water garden which is frankly artificial and depends for its water supply on the kitchen tap or the pump. This last condition means that you should have some knowledge of the economy of water and that can best be done by devising what is called a circulating system. (more…)

You can use the rectilinear system to create a really charming garden if you pay attention to three main factors in a garden, one of which is the beds and borders. In the evolution of a garden design, the beds should receive first consideration.

They may as well occupy more space than usual. The narrow strips of border that often avoid the fences of gardens are, for the most part, useless for a flower society. A width of six feet is not too much for a principal border and it should be in full sun.

If the main path defines its boundary, another border parallel to it may be made on the other side of the path but somewhere around four feet wide. This difference in width is designed to secure variety and to eliminate inequality.

Two such borders, the wide one planted with shrubs and herbaceous plants, the narrow one with surface growing flowers, become complementary, and offer opportunity for many charming effects such as the creation of a fine view. There are ways in which you make the view even more spectacular by adding something such as a garden statue, wall water fountain, or even a resin wall fountain.    (more…)

It is only by becoming acquainted with the flowering period of our plants that you can be sure that those you bring together for the purpose of constructing a contrast or color harmony will be in bloom at the same time. They should start blooming at approximately the same time and but periods of bloom should, as far as possible, coincide in length. The effect will be measured in duration by the period of the flower that lasts the shortest time.

By judicious selection of flowering plants, it is possible to contrive that there shall be few failures in this area. Succession is the very keynote of good gardening, for you cannot afford to shorten the period during which flowers are possible, nor can you tolerate empty spaces in your borders, unless you plan on filling them with a water wall fountain, patio statuary, or outdoor waterfalls.

By consulting a seedsman’s list you can select your plants and dispose of them so that as the spring blooming plants start to fail, others will succeed them for the summer months, and still others will take their place in autumn. This system of succession, when well arranged, will give you flowers from February to mid-November, thus covering the maximum period during which you are likely to be able to enjoy your garden. (more…)

The loveliness of flowering plants needs little embellishment by description. Certainly every gardener seeks the beauty and color that can be brought to his grounds by a variety of flowers. The proper arrangement of flower beds in your garden and attentive care to them can insure you a continuing bloom of lovely flowers year after year.

For with planning, it is possible to maintain flowers in your garden during the entire length of the growing season. Borders and beds are planted with flowering annuals and perennials which bloom at different periods during the year. By choosing carefully initially, and by caring for the flowers thereafter, the blooms will overlap each other, so that there will never be a period when an old bloom disappears but that a new one will start to show its color. (more…)