Gardening for Little Girls

Big Words for Common Things

To select your flowers intelligently, though, you must know something about their nature, habits, and tendencies, and certain words always found in seed catalogues and garden books may be puzzling to a beginner.

a. Annuals, for example, are the plants that live but a year or a single season.

b. Biennials, however, continue for two years before they perish, making roots and leaves the first year and usually flowering the second.

c. Perennials are the kind that continue for more than two years.

d. Deciduous refers to the shrubs and trees that lose their leaves in the fall.

e. Evergreens are those that keep their verdure the whole year round.

f. Herbaceous plants may be annual, biennial or perennial, but they have a stem that does not become woody, and that dies down after flowering.

g. Hybrids are plants produced by "crossing," or mixing two distinct varieties.

Plant Needs

All plant life, you must understand, requires five things,--WARMTH, LIGHT, AIR, WATER and FOOD. But plants differ as much as people, and some need more of one thing than they do of another. Some grow best in sunlight, others in the shade; some in sand, others in rich soil. You will have to find out what each kind requires. The food properties needed in the soil have some big names, too,--_nitrogen_, potash, and phosphoric acid, all of which are found in farm manures. If you can not conveniently get these, however, florists and seed-men can supply you with other fertilizers more easily handled.

The Seed Nursery

If you are just getting ready to start your garden, the annuals,--the plants that flower from seed the first season though they do not come up again,--will probably interest you most as they give the quickest returns. Many kinds can be started in the house in March, and for this purpose any kind of a shallow box will answer. Bore holes in the bottom and put in a layer of broken pottery or stones, to permit drainage, so the roots will not rot. Fill three or four inches deep with good soil, after pulverizing and taking out all sticks and stones.

Keep the earth moist by means of a fine spray, or sprinkle with a whisk broom. The ordinary sprinkler lets out the water with such force as to wash the seeds clear out of the ground.

The very finest seeds should be sprinkled lightly--and thinly--over the pulverized soil and then pressed into the earth with a small board.

The different seeds should be sown in separate rows, and the names plainly marked on the edge of the box, so you will not become confused, or forget what you are growing.

Cover the boxes with glass or a newspaper for the first week, to keep the earth moist and warm until the seeds sprout.

Ageratum, blue, good for edging; blooms for three months during summer. Asters, white, pink, red, purple; early in the fall. Alyssum, sweet, white; from May to November. Amethyst, blue, violet, white; flowers all summer. Balsam, white, red, yellow; from July to middle of September. Chrysanthemum, tricolor; August to middle of October. Cosmos, white, pink, crimson; August to November. Cypress vine, red, and white starry blossoms; June and July. Godetia, red, white; July to October. Moonflower (Japanese morning-glory), white, a vine; August to September. Pansy, all shades and combinations, of white, yellow, purple; July on. Chinese pink, white, rose, maroon; May to August. Salvia, red; August to frost. Ten Weeks' Stock, white, pink, purple; June and July. Zinnia, red, yellow, magenta; July to November.

Gaillardia, red, yellow. Forget-me-not, lovely blue. Larkspur, blue. Snapdragon, white, red, purple, yellow, pink. Sweet William, white, pink, red, maroon, plain, varigated. Coreopsis, yellow. Cupid's Dart, blue. Iceland Poppy, yellow, white, scarlet.

Get as many as you can--and your space will permit,--of all the lovely old perennials and the bulbs that come up every season with little or no care. One of the oldest,--now deserted--farmhouses on Long Island, still carries in its dooryard the impress of some gentle flower-lover long since passed away, in its annual spring beauty of daffodils and lilies-of-the-valley. And the few bulbs and pips transplanted from there to my own garden, have thrived and spread so profusely that I, too, can pass them on to others.

Hardy Flowers All Summer

With carefully chosen bulbs and perennials alone, it is possible to have a succession of lovely blooms. In March your heart will be made happy with snowdrop and crocus; in April with violet, daffodil, narcissus, hyacinth and tulip; in May and June with spirea, peony, iris, forget-me-not, columbine, baby's breath, bleeding heart, mountain pink, candytuft, Chinese pink; in July and August, golden glow, hollyhock, larkspur, hardy phlox, snap-dragon; September and October, sunflower, dahlia, gladiolus and aster, with November closing the season with all kinds of beautiful chrysanthemums. And many of these often come earlier than expected, or stay later. How easily raised are they by the person with little time!

God the first garden made.--_Cowley._

WHILE the snow is on the ground, you can be deciding on the best place for your garden, and finding out the kind of flowers and vegetables best suited to your soil and locality.

Write to your Representative at Washington, requesting the seeds he may have to give away. Write to two or three prominent seed firms for catalogues, and look over the garden books at your Public Library. Then if you do not quickly find yourself suffering from a violent attack of Garden Fever, you might as well give up, and not attempt to have a garden, for you will be lacking the real love and enthusiasm that count for success.

Did you ever realize that gardens differ as much as people? "No two gardens, no two human faces, were ever quite alike," says one writer, and you want to make yours expressive of yourself. So before taking another step, study your grounds, large and small,--for if you can have only part of a tiny plot, you still have many possibilities of expressing your own ideas and taste.

The garden is for the personal pleasure of the family, so DON'T put it out in front, for the careless passerby. Choose a more secluded spot where, if you wish, you can train a vine to shade your seat when you want to sit down and enjoy the birds, butterflies and flowers.

When you have decided on the location of your garden, coax some one stronger than yourself to dig up the ground thoroughly, and spade in some fertilizer,--preferably farmyard manure. Plants live on the tonic salts they draw out of the soil through their roots, as much as they do on the carbonic acid gas which they take out of the air through their leaves. So have the ground nourishing, and also nicely pulverized and free from sticks and stone, that the little rootlets can easily work their way through and find their needed nutriment.

Never forget that third rule before mentioned,--"Preserve open lawn centers." A beautiful lawn is as satisfying to the eye as flowers, so never spoil one by cutting it up with beds. They can be put along the sides, used for bordering walks, and nestled close to the house.

Plan for Small Back Yard

One of the loveliest gardens I know is at the back end of a city lot, not more than thirty feet square, with a plot of velvety grass in the center. The irregular border surrounding this bit of lawn is a mass of flowers from earliest spring until black frost,--from March until December,--and delights the whole neighborhood. The secret lies in the fact that the owner knows how to plant for succession of bloom. The ground is laid out this way.

If you can have only a single flower bed, however, try to get it in a sunny, protected spot, preferably facing south, where the cold winds of early spring and late fall will do the least damage. Make a list of the flowers that like such conditions,--and most of them do,--and then pick out those you prefer, writing after each name the time that it blooms. Be sure to select some of each of the early spring, late spring, summer, early fall, and late fall, so that you will have flowers to enjoy the whole season through.

Succession of Bloom

For example, you can choose first from the crocus, snowdrop, scilla, the hardy candytuft that rivals the snow for whiteness, and the tiny creeping phlox that will carpet your bed with pink; next, from the daffodil, narcissus and jonquil groups, with the tulips,--all of which must be set out in the fall for bloom in April and May: then the iris in May and June. Sweet alyssum, nasturtiums, corn flowers, Shirley poppies and cosmos (all annuals), you can count on blooming around New York from July to black frost; dahlias from August to black frost, and monthly roses the entire summer,--with a tidal wave in June. (I know, for I have seen them all, over and over again.)