A Woman's Hardy Garden

A single plant of Delphinium (Perennial Larkspur)

June twenty-first

One can never say enough in praise of Delphiniums. Three-year-old plants will send up eight to ten beautiful great spikes of the richest blue, four feet high. The moment a blossom withers, cut the stalk down to the ground; another will immediately spring up. I had four crops of blossoms from some of my Delphiniums last summer, so that, from the end of June until the middle of October, there were always some of them in blossom. Some varieties of tall English Delphiniums are very beautiful. Among them is one, Cœlestinum, of the loveliest shade of light blue, with very large, double individual flowers. As I have said before, the Delphinium blossoms at the same time as Lilium candidum, and should be planted near by. Great bunches of these two flowers, in tall vases, are lovely as well as unusual.

There is a horrid small white worm which attacks the roots of the Delphinium, and gives no sign until you see the plant dying. I have found that keeping the soil around the plant well covered with coal ashes is a preventive. Delphiniums are hardy and long-lived (unless the worm gets them), and, once planted, they live a dozen years.

Coreopsis (Grandiflora). Every one knows the Coreopsis, which, by continual cutting, will give abundant bloom for three months. The variety with velvety maroon centers is particularly fine.

Hibiscus is very easy to raise, and should be planted among and along the edge of shrubbery. The plants are quite hardy, grow four feet high, and masses of them in pink or white are fine. They bloom in August and September.

Rockets, white and purple. These increase tremendously from self-sowing, so be careful or they will suffocate all that grows near them. I have many plants, all of which have come from a single one that a colored woman gave me a few years ago. She is a nice comfortable old “mammy,” black as the ace of spades, with a great love for flowers and a nice patch of them. We have exchanged plants several times. Some of the nicest things I have in my garden came to me in this way, and it is great fun.

Whenever, in driving about, I see a particularly fine plant in a dooryard, I make friends with its owner, and later suggest that if she (it is usually “she”) will give me a small root of this or that, I will bring her some plants or bulbs from my garden, of a kind which she has not. So we are both equally benefited. In this way I was once given a plant of Valerian, which has a tall, beautiful white flower with a most delicious odour like vanilla. It blooms for three weeks in late May and early June. From this one plant there are now in the garden a number of large clumps several feet in diameter, and I have given away certainly fifty roots. Valerian is a small white flower in good-sized clusters on long stems, seen now-a-days only in old-fashioned gardens. I am told it cannot be bought of horticulturists.

One must have Chrysanthemums, but where the thermometer falls below zero there are not many to be bought, other than the pompon varieties, that will blossom in the garden before being killed by frost, or that will survive the winter. Year after year I have bought dozens of the so-called “September-flowering Chrysanthemums,” and have only succeeded in making them blossom by the middle of October, by planting them on the south side of a building, in richest soil, giving abundance of water, and covering on all cold nights. But I have beautiful plants of perfectly hardy, good-sized blossoms of yellow, white, pink and red, the roots of which have come from the gardens of my farmer friends. I have never been able to buy this old-fashioned hardy kind. In the spring, as soon as the plants begin to sprout, divide them, setting out three or four sprouts together. In this way the stock will increase wonderfully.

Chrysanthemums require very rich soil, must have sun, and do best against a building or a wall. About the first of July and the first of September have a couple of trowelfuls of manure carefully dug in about the roots of each plant. Buds should not be allowed to form until September, and the new shoots should be pinched back until then, to make the plants strong and bushy. I do not envy any one who has only the great, solemn, stiff flowers of the prize-show variety. An armful of the hardy garden ones, with their delicious odour, is worth a green-house full of the unnatural things which are the professional gardener’s pride. When you can keep twenty or more vases filled from your own garden with these last blossoms of the year, in all their lovely colours, and not miss one of them from the plants, you will agree with me that they are the only kind to raise.

Perennials, sown in rows in the seed-bed in April, will be nice little plants by July, when they should be lifted and transplanted some six inches apart. The portion of the seed-bed where the annuals were raised can be used now for the purpose. This is particularly necessary for Larkspur, Columbines, Monkshood, Platycodon, Coreopsis, Hibiscus and Pinks. If, when transplanting, each plant is set with a trowelful of manure, the result will be plants twice as large by the first of October, when they can be again transplanted to their permanent places.

Oriental Poppies and Pinks should also be sown in the perennial seed-bed.

Oriental Poppies, with great blossoms as large as a tea plate borne on strong stems, make a grand show about the end of May and beginning of June.

Pinks, too, should be in every garden, if only for their delicious, spicy odor. The Chinensis, or China Pinks, are the best.

Sweet Williams and Oriental Poppies need not be moved from the time they are sown until finally transplanted in the autumn.

Yuccas in blossom

July twelfth

Yucca filamentosa, the hardy native of Mexico, sends up, about the tenth of July, great stalks six to eight feet high, bearing masses of white flowers. The individual blossoms are of creamy waxy texture and as beautiful as an orchid. A single stalk of Yucca, in a tall vase, will last nearly a week, and is as unusual as it is beautiful for house decoration. Yuccas are perfectly hardy, need no protection in winter, no fertilizer, no water in dry weather. In my garden, at least, they have not been attacked by insects and have grown placidly on, needing absolutely no care but to have the stalks cut down when they have finished blossoming. They are most effective when grown in clumps, but look very well along a fence with Hollyhocks at the back. The plants are so inexpensive that I have bought mine, but see no reason why they cannot be raised from seed. Small plants form near the parent stem, and these can be separated and transplanted. A late spring frost will sometimes nip the flower stalk that has just started, and there will be no bloom that year. To avoid such a disaster, whenever, in late spring, a frosty night is suspected, cover the plants with a piece of burlap.

Tritomas (Red-hot Poker Plant) bloom in September and October, and should always be planted in masses, and in full sun. They must be well covered with leaves or stable litter late in November, or they will be winter-killed. They increase rapidly.

Gaillardias bloom all summer, and keep fresh in water for days. The plants are covered with long-stemmed, yellow flowers with dark crimson centers, and should also be protected in winter.

Veronica longifolia, a most beautiful dark blue flower, which grows in long spikes. Veronica remains in bloom during the month of August, and is one of the most showy flowers in the garden at that time.

Iris, Japanese and German, do well when naturalized in the grass. These plants increase so, that every four years they can be separated. Beginning with the German Iris, flowering the end of May, they can be had in bloom until the Japanese Iris finishes blossoming the middle of July. No Orchids are more beautiful than the Japanese Iris. A couple of weeks before and during the period of bloom they must be kept very moist.

Both the German and the Japanese Iris are perfectly hardy and increase rapidly. The English Iris, of which the white variety, known as Mont Blanc, is the most beautiful, and the Spanish Iris, in all its varieties, are not hardy. But with careful winter covering, about equal to that given to the everblooming Roses, they will generally survive, and are well worth the trouble. The roots of all varieties of Iris are very long, and care must be taken to give them plenty of room and to plant deep.

Peonies. For beauty and usefulness Peonies rank with Phloxes. Large plants will frequently bear twenty great blossoms. By raising both early and late varieties, their period of bloom can be continued for a month. The old, dark crimson variety is the first to bloom; the old-fashioned double pink and double white are beautiful enough to satisfy any one, but the new varieties give immense choice as to colour and form.

The Japanese Tree Peonies do not die to the ground every year, like the herbaceous kinds, but form woody branches and grow like a small shrub. The blossoms of these Tree Peonies are truly wonderful; the only care needed is a little fertilizer in the autumn and a slight winter covering. They are best grown in front of the shrubbery. They blossom before the herbaceous varieties. The herbaceous Peonies can be grown in large beds by themselves, in borders with other plants, or as single specimens in the grass or among the shrubs.

Peonies start so early in the spring that they should be manured in the fall, or there is danger of breaking the tender shoots.

Bed of Peonies on edge of lawn

June sixth

Phlox. There is no flower in the garden more beautiful, more easily cultivated, or giving so much bloom as the Phlox. I could certainly never have a garden without it. In mine there must be a couple of thousand. I have a great mass, of probably two hundred herbaceous Phloxes, growing together in one corner of my garden, the very tall varieties over four feet high. About the fifteenth of July, every year, this corner is a superb sight. Most of these plants are over fifteen years old. They have been kept fine by heaviest top-dressing every year, and by lifting all the plants every three years and digging in quantities of manure, and also by separating each plant into three, by cutting the roots with a spade, or pulling apart with the fingers.

The newer varieties of Phlox come in the most beautiful colours, – dark crimson, fiery scarlet, many shades of pink, pink striped with white, and pink with a white eye; all shades of lilac, lilac with white and purple, the beautiful pure white, and the white with the scarlet eye. Of all the varieties, my favorites are the snowy white, and the salmon-pink with the dark red eye. Buy fifty large field-grown plants; at the end of three years separate them, and you have a hundred and fifty. They present a picture of progression much surer than the tale of the eggs that were to do so much.

Many of the individual blossoms of my Phloxes are larger than a fifty-cent piece; a number of them larger by measurement than a silver dollar, and the heads also are very large. Always erect, neat and smiling, never needing to be staked (such a task in a large garden), when once grown they must always be dear to a gardener’s heart. By breaking off the heads of Phlox immediately after blooming, a second crop of flowers will appear in about three weeks. The heads will not be so large as the first, but they will amply repay the slight trouble.

Every owner of a garden has certain favorites; it really cannot be helped, although the knowledge that it is so makes it seem almost as unfair as for a mother to have a favorite child.

A real lover of flowers finds it difficult to cast away a plant that has bloomed its best, even though the blossom is unsatisfactory. In my garden there are, at present, some plants that I am longing to dig up and burn. There are two climbing Roses that came by mistake in a large order and were set out. They have thriven as no others, cover a very large space on a trellis, and in June bear thousands of a most hideous, small, purplish crimson Rose. The other plant is Scabiosia Caucasica. Beware of the same. The description of it in a catalogue caused me to feel that without it the garden was nothing. A dozen were ordered and set out in a border, in two clumps. They grew and waxed strong, and fairly clambered over everything within several feet of them, seeming to be like gigantic thistles. Finally in August, on stems two feet long, the eagerly looked-for blossoms appeared. These were described in the catalogue as “a large head of pale blue flowers.” But, to my despair, it developed a round green ball about three inches in circumference, with white thistle-like petals. And yet the plants had surpassed themselves. It seems a poor reward to turn them out to die.

Lychnis (London Pride). I cannot now recall any perennial except the Cardinal Flower, which has blossoms of so brilliant a scarlet as Lychnis, or London Pride, growing tall and erect, with its bright colour. It is most effective when grown in large clumps.

Monkshood (Aconitum Napellus) grows four feet high, and has a beautiful blossom of rich blue growing in quite large clusters. The name must come from the resemblance each individual blossom bears to the capuchin of a monk. These plants should be grown under tall trees, for they cannot stand too strong sun, and will blossom very late in the autumn if protected by the trees from frost. I gathered them last year in November.

Phloxes, Rudbeckias, Monkshood, Valerian, Lychnis, Tritomas, Iris, Peonies and Veronica are best raised, not from seed, but by buying the plants, and then after a time, as I have said before, dividing them. For instance, take a fine large plant of Phlox of some choice variety, divide all the roots and set out each one separately. From one plant you may, in two years’ time, get twenty splendid ones, and the same with the other varieties I have mentioned.

Rudbeckias, of the Golden Glow variety, grow from six to eight feet high, and must be staked, or when heavy with blossoms they will blow down or be beaten down by the rain. Each plant will bear quantities of long-stemmed double yellow blossoms, which resemble a double Dahlia. These will keep nearly a week in water. When the plant has finished blossoming, cut down the tops, and in October there will be a second crop of blossoms just above the ground.

The Golden Glow should be divided every other year, and in this way it is even more remunerative than the Phlox. I started with fifty plants, and think it will soon be possible to have a farm of them.

List of Hardy Perennials, with Height, Colour and Timeand Period of Blooming, Arranged Alphabetically

Aquilegia, or Columbine, all colours; one to two and one-half feet; tenth of May to first week in June.

Chrysanthemums, all colours but blue; three feet; end of September until very cold weather.

Delphiniums, all shades of blue; three to four feet; July; later crops after cutting down.

Dianthus barbatus (Sweet William), red, pink, white; one to two feet; June.

Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart), red and white; one to two feet; May.

Gaillardia, yellow, red center; two feet; July, August and September until killed by frost.

A single plant of Phlox

August twenty-fifth

Helianthus multiflorus plenus, hardy double Sunflower; yellow; four to five feet; all summer.

Hibiscus, pink, white; four to five feet; August and September.

Hollyhocks, all colours but blue; single, double, four to eight feet; tenth of July to middle of August; two to five stalks on a plant.

Hyacinthus candicans, white; four feet; last three weeks of August.

Iris Germanica, all colours; two to three feet; end of May to first of June.

Lychnis (London Pride), scarlet; two and one-half feet; July.

Oriental Poppy, scarlet, also pink; three feet; end of May and first of June.

Peonies, all colours but blue; two to two and one-half feet; end of May, for three weeks.

Pentstemon, many colours; three feet; August and September.

Phlox, all colours; two to four feet; early July until killed by frost, if the heads are cut as soon as finished flowering.

Platycodon Mariesi, blue; one and one-half feet; August.

Rocket (Hesperis Matronalis), white and purple; two feet; May.

Rudbeckia (Golden Glow), yellow; five to eight feet; middle of July to September first; second crop in October.

Tritoma (Red-hot Poker Plant), orange-scarlet; three to four feet; September and October until killed by frost.

Valerian, white; three feet; May and June.

Veronica longifolia, blue; two feet; August.

Yucca filamentosa, white; three to five feet; second and third weeks in July.

Vase of Canterbury Bells

June twenty-first

BIENNIALS AND A FEW BEDDING-OUT PLANTS

CHAPTER IX

BIENNIALS AND A FEW BEDDING-OUT PLANTS

There are but few hardy biennials. The important ones, which no garden should be without, are: Digitalis (Foxgloves) and Campanula medium, (Canterbury Bells.)

Foxgloves and Canterbury Bells bloom in June and July for more than a month, and give a touch of glory to any garden.

Catalogues and many gardening books say that the seeds should be sown in early autumn, and the plants will bloom the following year. It is true that they will bloom when sown in the autumn, but unless kept over the winter in a cold-frame the plants will send up stalks, only about a foot in height.

Sow the seeds of Foxgloves and Canterbury Bells in the shady part of the seed-bed in early April. Keep the young plants moist. About the fifteenth of July, if there are a large number of plants and there be no other place, they should be transplanted to the vegetable garden, where they can follow early crops of peas or lettuce. Have the ground spaded finely, and make shallow trenches, perhaps six inches deep, in which put a good layer of manure and cover this with earth, then set the plants about six inches apart. Keep them well watered when the weather is dry, and the earth thoroughly stirred. By the twentieth of September or the first of October they should be transplanted to the places where they are to bloom the following year. The plants should then be a foot across, and next June will send up several stalks about three feet high. The Canterbury Bells should be six inches across in the fall, and the next year about two feet high.

A single plant of Foxgloves; White Sweet William in front

June thirteenth

Foxgloves seed themselves with great abundance, unless the stalk is cut before the seed ripens. In the spring I have the little plants, seeded in this way from the year before, taken from the borders and transplanted in rows, and find they are larger and stronger than any others.

Foxgloves, white, spotted and pale lilac, are the pride of the garden. Plant them back of the Sweet Williams, in clumps of six or eight, or else with Peonies. They blossom at the same time, and the pinks or reds of Sweet Williams or Peonies, with here and there a mass of white, and the tall, graceful spikes of the Foxgloves rising above them, produce so beautiful an effect that you will simply have to go and look at them many times a day.

Canterbury Bells. Let any one who has been at Oxford in June and July recall the Canterbury Bells in those loveliest of all gardens, New College and St. Johns, and she will not rest until they have a place in her garden. I did not know these flowers before going to Oxford, and after seeing them could not wait to raise them from seed, but bought three dozen plants to look at the first year. The roots that came to me were miserable little things, and, in spite of every care, half of them died. Those which lived and bloomed were very lovely. They begin to blossom with us about the sixth of June, and last four or five weeks. In colour they are white, pink, purple and blue.

Canterbury Bells and Foxgloves are biennials. They are sown one year and grow for a year, then bloom and die. This seems a great deal of trouble for one season’s flowers, but their beauty repays the gardener a hundred fold. They require a slight winter protection of leaves or stable litter, but care must be taken that the tops of the plants are not covered.

THE BEDDING-OUT PLANTS

And now a little about the only three bedding-out plants that I grow – Dahlias, Cannas and Gladioli. I should have said four, for there is always a large bed of about four dozen Scarlet Salvia (the Bonfire variety is the best), whose brilliant colour and sturdy growth cannot be spared. They begin to blossom in July. By driving a tall stake in the center, and other stakes around the edge of the bed of Salvia, it can be covered with burlaps or carriage covers when the nights are frosty and preserved in all its beauty until November.

Dahlias can be grown in rows in the vegetable garden, if there be no other place for them. They are decorative and desirable for cutting. Plant two or three tubers in a hill about the third week in April. They should be planted eight inches deep and three feet apart, and kept well staked. The soil should not be too rich, or they will all grow to stalk and leaf, and blossom but little. All the varieties are lovely, the Cactus kind more so, perhaps, than the others. In the autumn, when the tops have been killed by the frost, the tubers must be taken up, dried off carefully, and stored in a cellar that does not freeze.

Gladioli can be planted from April fifteenth to June fifteenth, in beds by themselves or in clumps in the borders, so that the blossoms may be had in succession. Gladioli come in many colours.

Cannas, the beautiful French varieties. These, of course, are most effectively grown in masses, and require full sun. The roots, like those of the Dahlias, increase so that there is almost double the quantity to plant the next spring. It is well to have the Cannas started in boxes in sunny windows, in tool-room or carriage-house, by mid-April. They can be kept through the winter with the Dahlias and Gladioli.

Vase of Foxgloves

June fourteenth

ROSES

CHAPTER X

ROSES

The Rose asserts her right to the title of the “queen of flowers” through her very exclusiveness. She insists upon being grown apart from other plants; otherwise she sulks and is coy, refusing to yield more than an occasional bloom. I speak from experience, having tried several times to grow Roses in the front of wide borders, where soil and sun and everything except the proximity of other plants was propitious. But they scarcely bloomed at all. Now, the same bushes, planted in rows so that a cultivator may be run between them, flourish satisfactorily. Grow Roses, then, in beds by themselves or in rows.

If one has but half a dozen Roses, let them be grown apart from other plants.

Pansies, however, can be grown in the Rose beds, as I have elsewhere described; Gladioli can also be planted among them without detriment to either. The reason for this is that the roots of these two flowers are not deep and do not interfere with the nourishment of the Roses.