The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Landscape Gardening

NARCISSUS.—This genus includes several plants of great usefulness in the hardy garden. The trumpet narcissi, often called daffodils, are especially fine, either in the general border or naturalized in the grass. Some of the best sorts for outdoor culture are Horsfieldi, Emperor, Empress, Bulbocodium, Poet narcissus, Trumpet Major and Incomparabilis. Narcissi canbest be transplanted in June and July.

TUBEROSES may be planted in the flower garden or border with considerable satisfaction. They should be set in fall and covered with a mulch.

TULIPS make fine displays in early spring, and for a week the open bed in mid-lawn is almost bearable, so that we forget the manure heap which has been there all winter representing the necessary flower bed. But tulips may also be scattered in the border with other plants, or even set into the turf. There are many magnificent species and varieties listed and described in all catalogs. The best groups for garden planting are the cottage tulips, the Darwins and the varieties known as breeders.

SCILLA, Squills. These pretty blue flowers are amongst the first to greet the spring and as always welcome. They should occupy a sheltered border where the early sun will give them a prompt start.

YUCCA.—Nurserymen usually classify the yuccas with the bulbous plants, and perhaps they arc as much at home here as anywhere. They must be used with caution, but in surroundings somewhat picturesque they may be introduced with fine effect. Yucca filamentosa is the species most generally used, but Y.angustifolia is also desirable.

Climbers

Vines are valuable not only for their flowering effect but they are valuable for the effect of their fruit also. Some vines, such as the matrimony vine, with its brilliant orange fruit, the American bitter-sweet, with its red and orange fruit, together with the Virginia creeper, with IIN interesting blue fruit, are valuable in a landscape setting far into the winter months. Albert D. Taylor.
In making up a landscape picture proper, climbers arc of minor importance. Their chief use, in purely naturalistic compositions, is not for climbing, but for trailing over rocks, or down sloping banks, or for clambering over low bushes. In such situations as these they are very effective.

But when buildings are introduced, and fences have to be dealt with, and unsightly objects need disguise or concealment, the climbers arc indispensable. In the shading and adornment of porches they play no insignificant part in the list of the gardener's materials.

I wish to emphasize the fact that no climber ought to be planted on level ground unless there be first some suitable support on which it is to climb. It is not uncommon to find cases in which the climber was first planted, and afterward some crazy and impertinent structure was arranged to meet its demands. This is one of the ways of losing naturalness, along with all other kinds of beauty.