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Planning Your Garden

Planting

THE practical aspect of planting is for the working gardener. It consists of placing the plants in the soil in such a way that they at once find conditions suitable for growth, both as regards nourishment and external environment. This implies a knowledge of the requirements of each kind of plant. It is not sufficient to dig a hole and thrust in the roots. The hole should be of the right depth and of ample size to accommodate the roots when spread out over its bottom, and the soil thrown in should be carefully compacted around the roots by pressure. These details, however, do not enter into the question of garden design. Nevertheless the garden maker has a very real concern in the planting operations, because it is in the placing of the plants that his garden picture may achieve its highest development, or be utterly marred.

Flowers — In planting a bed or border it is necessary to consider the flowers in respect to:

1. Color.
2. Habit.
3. Period of bloom.
4. Succession.

I. The most striking characteristic of the flower undoubtedly is color, and the success of any piece of planting will depend to a large extent upon the skill and good taste with which the colors are managed. In the days when the old-fashioned flowers were deposed to make room for that unfortunate quartet, scarlet geranium, scarlet sage, canna, and coleus, the canons of good taste were lost sight of in the new-born enthusiasm for vivid contrast in primary colors. The vogue for these flowers has now somewhat declined, but the trail of it still lingers in many gardens, and gardeners continue to plant as if the acme of good effect depended upon the accomplishment of a series of garish contrasts in the most brilliant gamut of color at command. It is a question whether we should ever attempt to associate vividly contrasting colors, for if the mass of each color is not large, they will cancel each other at anything but short range.

The finest color effects are to be sought rather in harmonies, which offer a much wider opportunity for broad, rich, and conspicuously telling display, both for close inspection and for distant effect.

The construction of harmonious color schemes is not so much a matter of rule as of feeling, and a sense for color is by no means universal. On the contrary, it is a somewhat rare gift, and it is not surprising, therefore, that a goodly proportion of gardeners make mistakes. Fortunately, however, most people who are not color blind can recognize a good color effect when they see it, though they may be powerless to originate one.