Landscape gardening has often been likened to the painting of a picture. Your art-work teacher has doubtless told you that a good picture should have a point of chief interest, and the rest of the points simply go to make more beautiful the central idea, or to form a fine setting for it. So in landscape gardening there must be in the gardener’s mind a picture of what he desires the whole to be when he completes his work.

Close your eyes and picture a house of natural color, that mellow gray of the weathered shingles. Now add to this old house a purple wisteria. Can you see the beauty of it?

The place for a flower garden is generally at the side or rear of the house. The backyard garden is a lovely idea, is it not? Who wishes to leave a beautiful looking front yard, turn the corner of a house, and find a dump heap? Not I. The flower garden may be laid out formally in neat little beds, or it may be more of a careless, hit-or-miss sort. Both have their good points. Great masses of bloom are attractive.

You should have in mind some notion of the blending of color. Nature appears not to consider this at all, and still gets wondrous effects. This is because of the tremendous amount of her perfect background of green, and the limitlessness of her space, while we are confined at the best to relatively small areas. So we should endeavor not to blind people’s eyes with clashes of colors which do not at close range blend well. In order to break up extremes of colors you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in effect green.

Hibiscus is a genus of flowering plants with about 200–220 different species. Also called rosemallow, these plants are native to warm temperate, subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world. In Hindu worship, hibiscus is used as an offering to God Kali and Lord Ganesha, and extracts from some species are said to have health benefits.

The ideal spot for a garden is one with southern exposure. Here the sun lies warm all day long. When the garden has this type of sun exposure, the rows of flowers should run north and south. Thus placed, the plants receive the sun’s rays all morning on the eastern side, and all afternoon on the western side. This way, you are less likely to have any lopsided plants.

Suppose the garden faces southeast. In this case the western sun is out of the problem. In order to get the best distribution of sunlight run the rows northwest and southeast.

The idea is to get the most sunlight as evenly distributed as possible for the longest period of time. From the lopsided growth of window plants it is easy enough to see the effect on plants of poorly distributed light.

Keeping in mind that you wish the sun to shine part of the day on one side of the plants and part on the other, you can sort out any situation. The southern exposure gives the ideal case because the sun gives half time nearly to each side. A northern exposure may mean an almost entire cut-off from sunlight; while northeastern and southwestern places always get uneven distribution of sun’s rays, no matter how carefully this is planned.�

Regardless of what kind of rose you have in your garden, these tips apply:

• Always make sure that your equipment is clean and sharp.

• Cut at a 45-degree angle about 1/4 inch above outward-facing bud. The cut should slant away from the bud.

• Find the canes that are shriveled, dark brown, or black. Remove these first, as they are dead or dying and can drain the energy of the entire plant.

• Take a look at the remaining canes. Remove all the weak, thin ones — those that are less than a pencil in diameter.

• Remove any sucker growth. The best way to do this is to dig down to the root where the sucker originates and rip it off where it starts. If you just cut off the suckers, you encourage the re-growth of several more where once there was only one.

• After making cuts, it is a good idea to seal the ends of the cuts. This will help prevent cane borers. Ordinary, household white glue works well.

“The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be the most startling event in the world.”
– Anonymous

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.”
– Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Oh, hardy flower, disdained as weed,
Despised for head of feathery seed,
Your unsung virtues rate a ballad,
Choice roots for wine, crisp leaves for salad.”
– Betty Gay, “Dandelion�”