The Children's Book of Gardening — Background and Themes

[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.]

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

By MISS CONWAY and SIR MARTIN CONWAY

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF ART

By ELIZABETH W. GRIERSON

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF CELTIC STORIES

By ELIZABETH W. GRIERSON

CHILDREN’S TALES FROM SCOTTISH BALLADS

By ELIZABETH W. GRIERSON

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF EDINBURGH

By ELIZABETH W. GRIERSON

CHILDREN’S TALES OF ENGLISH MINSTERS

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF LONDON

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF STARS

THE BOOK OF THE RAILWAY

A. AND C. BLACK · SOHO SQUARE · LONDON, W.

=America= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK

=Australasia= OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 205 Flinders Lane, MELBOURNE

=Canada= THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. 27 Richmond Street West, TORONTO

=India= MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. Macmillan Building, BOMBAY 309 Bow Bazaar Street, CALCUTTA

TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR FROM DRAWINGS BY MRS. CAYLEY-ROBINSON

LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1909

‘It is the Spirit of Paradise That prompts such work, a Spirit strong, That gives to all the self-same bent Where life is wise and innocent.’

BETTY, BARBARA, AND CYRIL

THIS book was suggested by the questions of a boy of twelve who lived in Germany and sent for an English book that would teach him the elements of gardening. One of the authors asked the editor of a well-known gardening journal to recommend her a suitable book, and found that he knew of none written from a child’s point of view, and supplying the instruction a child could understand and use. Yet in these days, when so many children have a garden, such a book must be needed. The aim in this one has been to tell the juvenile reader how to make his garden grow, and the authors have not allowed themselves to wander in the pleasant byways of description, reflection, or amusement. They wished to help the budding gardener rather than to entertain the child, and they have tried to keep within the limits of what a child can do.

But as children vary in age and strength as well as in circumstances, they will not all be able to follow the whole of the advice here given. Cyril, for instance, could dig his own little plot of ground, but Betty could not for many a year to come; and though Cyril may not have the patience to sow his sweet peas in the best of all possible ways, Betty will read in this book how it should be done, and then get one of her father’s gardeners to do it for her. As for Barbara, she is a traveller, and can have no garden of her own; but she sets daffodils in her friends’ gardens, and is content to see them, with her inward eye, dancing in the breeze for their delight. So all children, according to their strength and means, may love a garden, whether it is contained in a few flower-pots on a city window-sill, or encouraged to expand and grow in the wide spaces of the country.

Gardening, like other bents, will find a way; but it will run more smoothly if it has a little help at the beginning.

I. THE SITUATION AND SOIL 1

III. HARDY PERENNIALS 43

IV. BULBS, CORMS, AND TUBERS 70

VI. BEDDING PLANTS 107

VIII. CARNATIONS AND PINKS 131

X. ROCK AND WALL GARDENS 152

XI. DIFFICULT AND SHADY GARDENS 166

XII. SOME HARDY CLIMBERS 172

XIII. FRUIT AND VEGETABLES 181

XIV. WINDOW, ROOM, AND JAPANESE GARDENS 194

XV. A CALENDAR OF WORK 212

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BY MRS. CAYLEY-ROBINSON

A HERBACEOUS BORDER _Frontispiece_

LARKSPURS AND PINKS 65

A CORNISH COTTAGE 112

‘THE ROAD TO ROME’ 160

A ROOM GARDEN IN SPRING 208

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF GARDENING

THE SITUATION AND SOIL

THE first thing to decide is that you really want a garden of your own, and mean to work in it and keep it clean and tidy. The next thing is to learn a little about situation and soil, because you cannot choose which plants to grow until you know what conditions you can give them. You must not think that you can ram any plants into any patch of ground with success. There are a few that are obliging and will live almost anywhere, but even these will generally show you by their size and health whether they like their home or not. Many will just exist, but not do well without the food or place that suits them, while others will die unless they have what they want.

If you can possibly avoid it, do not have your garden under trees or large shrubs, or close to an evergreen hedge. The drip from trees is bad for nearly all plants, and the big roots made by trees and shrubs exhaust the soil. Besides, on account of the roots, you cannot dig the ground properly and feed it with manure. However, if your choice is between a shady garden and none, you should certainly take it, and learn what can be done with it. Later on in the book we will tell you which plants will do well in such a spot, and how you should treat them. The best situation for a garden is one that gets the morning sun, and is either right out in the open or sheltered on the north. It is best for the plants and best for you, because in a warm, sunny corner you can often work on days when it would not be safe in the chilly parts of the garden.

Do not have a large plot if you mean to look after it without help: twelve feet long by seven feet wide would be enough, and even a smaller piece could be made into a pretty garden. If you have more than you can keep tidy, the grown-ups will be sorry they let you have a garden at all, and some day they will say that the gardener wants your bit of sunny border for his winter lettuces, and that you had better take yourself and your weeds and your mess away to that no-man’s-land in the shrubbery, where nothing much will grow, and where it is always sad and chilly. So we will imagine that your garden is twelve feet long and seven feet wide, and that the sun shines on it whenever it is fine.

Whether your plot is a bed by itself or part of a wide border, it will not be easy and pleasant to manage unless you make a path through the centre—a dry, hard, narrow path, on which you can stand or kneel when you are at work amongst your plants. Across the breadth would be the most convenient position. To do this you should get a penny piece of tape, because it is easier to see and keep straight than string. Measure the length of your garden with it, having tied one end of the tape to a stick and put the stick firmly into one corner of the ground. Tie a knot in the tape when you reach the other corner. Then carry the knot back to the stick, and the doubled tape will mark the centre of the whole length. Put a stick into the ground there. Then you get two other sticks, and put them nine inches on either side of the centre one, so as to get your eighteen-inch path exactly measured at the top of your garden. The other side of the garden may be measured in the same way, and the centre sticks removed at either end. Then you bring your tape right along both sides of your path, tying it to your sticks at each end, so that you have two straight lines to guide you. If you are going to make your path yourself, you must now take your spade and dig out all the earth to the depth of ten inches. This will be hard work, and take you several days, but if you want your path to be dry and firm it must be done. The earth you throw out should be divided as evenly as possible between your two beds, and be neatly spread on them when you have finished. The deep trench you make by digging must be filled with broken stones or pieces of brick well stamped down, and afterwards covered with gravel or fine stones. Now you will have two borders, each seven feet long and five feet three inches wide. If you choose you can make one side a flower garden and the other side a kitchen garden, and in your kitchen garden you can grow some flowers as well as vegetables. In any case, you will be glad of your path, and if your plot is smaller than the one we recommend, you should make it on one side instead of in the middle. As far as possible, you should do all your gardening from it, so that the soil around the plants does not get trodden down too hard. Most plants like to have a firm hold with their roots, but not to have a caked surface that keeps out the air and rain.

Before you put in any plants you must pay some attention to the state of your soil. Even grown-ups often seem to think that earth is earth, and that any flowers will nourish in any ground. But, as a matter of fact, plants are even more various and dainty about their food than human beings; they answer as well to clever treatment, and they look as starved as slum children when they are not properly fed. Gardeners usually tell you that nearly everything will nourish in a good loam, and that it may be either natural or the result of cultivation. Soil of this kind is a mixture of clay, sand, and humus, and is easily worked. In or near London you generally get abominable soil in your garden, because the builders have dug out the good stuff and replaced it with any kind of rubbish. Everyone knows the London mixture of black, sticky clay, broken bricks and bottles, and the roots of grimy trees and shrubs. Many things will no more thrive in such a medium than a baby would on lobster salad. If you have to begin your gardening career with a builder’s rubbish-heap, you must be content to grow some of the strongest things, such as Starworts, Foxgloves, Nasturtiums, and some bulbs, and to renew them every year.

Roughly speaking, soils may be divided into heavy and light—those that hold wet and those that do not. The heavy kinds are mostly clay, though pure peat retains a great deal of moisture. The light soils are gravel, limestone, and sand. If you are used to a heavy clay soil, you will envy the people who have a light sandy one; and then some day when you come to work a hungry, sandy garden, you will wish for some of the sticky soil that is not easy to handle, but which many plants love. In either case you must try to improve matters, and to do this you must first find out what your soil is. In a limestone country you need not add lime, but it would be good for clay. In Holland pure sand has been made fertile by the addition of cow manure.

It is often said that the gardener’s year begins in November, because that is when you would make a new bed, or feed and alter an old one. If you make a bed well one autumn and grow things that like to be left alone, you would obviously not make it all over again the next. You would ‘mulch’ any part of it that required food or protection—_i.e._, you would supply a top dressing, a winter blanket of manure that would both keep things warm, and, with the help of the air and rain, send them food. When the spring comes, these top dressings look untidy, and they are either lightly and carefully forked in or taken away. By that time they are chiefly straw. When you are making a new bed, or reorganizing an old one completely, you cover the soil three inches thick with manure, make trenches, and take care that it is all buried at least ten inches deep, because very few plants like to come into contact with it when it is first put into the ground. It is an operation that you cannot manage at all for yourself if you are a girl. You must get a gardener or an elder brother to do it for you. If you tried digging in manure, your nurse would say to you what the nurse in Leech’s old picture said to the child who stirred her tea with the snuffers: ‘Miss Mary, you are not to stir your tea with the snuffers. It is not at all ladylike, and I am sure your papa would not approve of it.’

The manure used should not be quite fresh, or it will make the earth ‘sick,’ as gardeners say, and kill your delicate plants and seedlings. After it has been dug in, the winter frosts and rains do a great deal to ripen it, and in the spring, when you plant, your flowers will be vigorous and plentiful, because they will find the food they need ready for them. But if you live in a town you may not be able to get farm manure easily, and then you would find a chemical one useful. Clay’s Fertilizer is a well-known manure, and so is Shefa, but many people have killed their plants by using too much of them. A tablespoonful to the square yard is enough, and it should be scattered evenly over the surface before it is dug in. There are many other chemical manures, but it is not necessary for you to know much about them yet. If your grown-ups understand them, they will provide you with what your soil needs; and if they do not, you can get on very well with the manures described here. Do not use chemical manures if you have a damp, heavy soil. In any garden it is a good plan to collect all the rubbish you can—old rags and toys, for instance, dry dead leaves, and small dry sticks—for a bonfire. The ashes left provide a food that all plants like, and they should never be wasted, but dug into the soil. In the country soot is good for your soil, and most useful in keeping off slugs. In a town you would not use it at all except as a defence against slugs. Leaf-mould is good for all soils, but it is not a rich food. Sand should be mixed with clay land that is heavy and sticky. Lime is valuable where soil is ‘sour,’ dark, and mossy, and some plants need it, as a child needs milk; but you had better not try to apply it by yourself. It has to be ‘slaked’ by the air or with water before it is used, and makes a white powdery dust that would not be liked on your clothes. Mortar from buildings contains lime, and is easier to manage.

If you cannot enlist a gardener, and are going to make your own garden, you must learn to dig it over properly, and for this you will want a strong spade suited to your height. You begin by digging a trench ten inches deep from one end of your garden to the other. The earth you take out should be put in a wheelbarrow or on the farther side of the border. When the first trench is finished you put some manure all along it; then you start a second one, close to the first, and this time you put the earth you take out into the manured trench ready for it. In this way the manure and the soil that was on the top get buried beneath soil that has been hidden till now from the light and air. You go on making these trenches side by side until you reach the edge of the border, and you fill the last one with the soil you first removed, which is waiting for you in the wheelbarrow. In digging you should put your spade straight down into the ground, and help it with your foot to go in deep; then lean back on it, lift it out full of soil, and tilt it sharply into the empty trench. But you should not try to dig with a full-sized spade, as even with a small one you will find it hard work. The operation is a most important one, because when the buried soil is brought to the top the weather comes and gardens for you there, as well as deeper down, where the manure now lies covered. The winter frosts, the summer rains, the air and the sunlight, all affect it strongly, sweeten it, break it, and make it ready for your flowers. In the winter the surface of your beds should be left as rough as possible, because then the frost can get in easily and do its work. We will tell you later several ways of protecting some of your plants from frost, for the degree of cold that improves your soil will kill your favourite plants if you do not take care of them. But if you become a really keen gardener, you will find that you often look at the weather from the gardener’s point of view. The rainy day that is disappointing other people will be settling in the newly-planted things, or helping your seeds to germinate, or persuading your bulbs to put out roots. When warm weather comes, you know that everything will take a start, and get on quickly; but the frosty days that skaters love will make you anxious, especially while you are a beginner. When you have had a garden for a year or two, you will have seen many a plant hang its head for a time and after all recover.

The tools used by your elders will be too large and heavy for you, but on no account have a ‘Child’s Garden Set,’ as they are never strong. Buy each implement separately, of good quality, and the size to suit you. You will want a spade, a hoe, a rake, a broad flat trowel, and a small hand-fork. If possible, you should also have a two-quart watering-can, a sieve, and a little galvanized iron or wooden wheelbarrow for rubbish. Always knock the earth off your tools when you have done gardening, scrape them clean, and put them away in a dry shed. They should never be left out in the wet. The watering-can should be emptied and turned upside down to dry. If you cannot have a wheelbarrow of your own, you must use an old pail or basket for weeds and rubbish. These should be carefully collected as you work, and then either thrown away or saved in a neat heap for your bonfire. Weeds are sometimes burnt, sometimes buried deep under the soil to make ‘humus,’ and sometimes left on a rubbish-heap until they have decayed and are ready to make soil again. ‘Humus’ is the dark earthy substance that you get from decayed vegetation, and it is useful to plants; but in your little plot you will not have a large quantity of weeds, and when you have planted it you will not want to dig holes to bury them. You will see many operations going on in the large garden that you cannot imitate and need not understand until you have learned to cultivate your own. When that time comes, and you know all that we can teach you, there are many larger, fuller books that will tell you a great deal we must leave untold. We shall only discuss things that you can grow without much skill, or strength, or expense. A little sense and patience, and a little of your pocket-money, will enable you to carry out our instructions.