Are you new to Carma's Flowerama? Then you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can do that easily by using either the email subscription box in the navigation bar or the RSS feed subscribe button just below that. Thanks for visiting!

Flowers may well go along the side of the building, or bordering a walk. In general, though, keep the front lawn space open and unbroken by beds.

What lovelier in early spring than a bed of daffodils close to the house? Hyacinths and tulips, too, form a blaze of glory. These are little or no bother, and start the spring aright. One may make of some bulbs an exception to the rule of unbroken front lawn. Snowdrops and crocuses planted through the lawn are beautiful. They do not disturb the general effect, but just blend with the whole.

One expert bulb gardener says to take a basketful of bulbs in the fall, walk about your grounds, and just drop bulbs out here and there. Wherever the bulbs drop, plant them. Such small bulbs as those we plant in lawns should be in groups of four to six. Daffodils may be thus planted, too.

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 colour. 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 endeavour 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.

A building often needs the help of vines or flowers or both to tie it to the grounds in such a way as to form a harmonious whole. Vines lend themselves well to this work. It is better to plant a perennial vine, and so let it form a permanent part of your landscape scheme. The Virginia creeper, wistaria, honeysuckle, a climbing rose, the clematis and trumpet vine are all good choices.

Of course, the morning-glory is an annual vine, as is the moon-vine and wild cucumber. Now, these have their special function. For often, it is necessary to cover an ugly thing for just a time, until the better things and better times come. The annual is go-to plant for this work.

Along an old fence a hop vine is a thing of beauty. One might try to rival the woods’ landscape work. For often one sees festooned from one rotted tree to another the ampelopsis vine.

Landscape gardening may follow along very formal lines or along informal lines. The first would have straight paths, straight rows in stiff beds, everything, as the name tells, perfectly formal. The other method is, of course, the exact opposite. There are danger points in each. The formal arrangement is likely to look too stiff; the informal, too fussy, too wiggly.

As far as paths go, keep this in mind: a path should always lead somewhere. That is its business to direct one to a definite place. Now, straight, even paths are not unpleasing if the effect is to be that of a formal garden. The danger in the curved path is an abrupt curve, a whirligig effect. It is far better for you to stick to straight paths unless you can make a really beautiful curve. No one can tell you how to do this.

Garden paths may be of gravel, of dirt, or of grass. One sees grass paths in some very lovely gardens. I doubt, however, if they would serve as well in your small gardens. Your garden areas are so limited that they should be re-spaded each season, and the grass paths are a great bother in this work. Of course, a gravel path makes a fine appearance, but again you may not have gravel at your command. It is possible for any of you to dig out the path for two feet. Then put in six inches of stone or clinker. Over this, pack in the dirt, rounding it slightly toward the centre of the path.

There should never be depressions through the central part of paths, since these form convenient places for water to stand. The under layer of stone makes a natural drainage system.

As trees are chosen because of certain good points, so shrubs should be. In a clump I should wish some which bloomed early, some which bloomed late, some for the beauty of their fall foliage, some for the colour of their bark and others for the fruit.

Some spireas and the forsythia bloom early. The red bark of the dogwood makes a bit of colour all winter, and the red berries of the barberry cling to the shrub well into the winter.

Certain shrubs are good to use for hedge purposes. A hedge is rather prettier usually than a fence. The Californian privet is excellent for this purpose. Osage orange, Japan barberry, buckthorn, Japan quince, and Van Houtte’s spirea are other shrubs which make good hedges.

Also, when selecting your shrubbery, go with those of the area you live in. For, just like the trees mentioned in last week’s post, unusual and foreign plants do less well.

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, too, in landscape gardening there must be in the gardener’s mind a picture of what he or she desires the whole of the garden to be when the work is completed.

From this study we shall be able to work out a little theory of landscape gardening.

Let us go to the lawn. A good extent of open lawn space is always beautiful. It is restful. It adds a feeling of space to even small grounds. So we might generalize and say that it is well to keep open lawn spaces. If one covers his lawn space with many trees, with little flower beds here and there, the general effect is choppy and fussy. It is a bit like an over-dressed person.

A single tree or a small group is not a bad arrangement on the lawn. Do not centre the tree or trees. Let them drop a bit into the background. Make a pleasing side feature of them. In choosing trees one must keep in mind a number of things. You should not choose an overpowering tree; the tree should be one of good shape, with something interesting about its bark, leaves, flowers or fruit.

While the poplar is a rapid grower, it sheds its leaves early and so is left standing, bare and ugly, before the fall is old. Mind you, there are places where a row or double row of Lombardy poplars is very effective. But I think you’ll agree with me that one lone poplar is not.

The catalpa is quite lovely by itself. Its leaves are broad, its flowers attractive, the seed pods which cling to the tree until away into the winter, add a bit of picturesqueness.

The bright berries of the ash, the brilliant foliage of the sugar maple, the blossoms of the tulip tree, the bark of the white birch, and the leaves of the copper beech all these are beauty points to consider.

Place makes a difference in the selection of a tree. Suppose the lower portion of the grounds is a bit low and moist, then the spot is ideal for a willow. Don’t group trees together which look awkward. A long-looking poplar does not go with a nice rather rounded little tulip tree. A juniper, so neat and prim, would look silly beside a spreading chestnut. One must keep proportion and suitability in mind.

I’d never advise the planting of a group of evergreens close to a house, and in the front yard. The effect is very gloomy indeed. Houses thus surrounded are overcapped by such trees and are not only gloomy to live in, but truly unhealthful. The chief requisite inside a house is sunlight and plenty of it.

Also, in tree selection, it is usually better to choose those of the area one lives in. Unusual and foreign plants do less well, and often harmonize poorly with their new setting.

There are two general classes of insects known by the way they do their work. One kind gnaws at the plant, taking chunks of it into its system. This kind of insect has a mouth fitted to do this work. Grasshoppers and caterpillars are of this sort.

The other kind sucks the juices from a plant. This, in some ways, is the worst sort. Plant lice belong here, as do mosquitoes, which prey on us. All the scale insects fasten themselves on plants, and suck out the life of the plants.

So, how can we fight these critters? The gnawing fellows may be caught with poison sprayed upon plants, which they take into their bodies with the plant. The Bordeaux mixture which is a poison sprayed upon plants for this purpose.

In the other case the only thing is to attack the insect direct. So certain insecticides are sprayed on the plant to fall upon the insect. They do a deadly work of attacking, in one way or another, the body of the insect.

Sometimes we are much troubled with underground insects at work. You have seen a garden covered with ant hills. Here is a remedy, but one of which you must be careful.

This question is constantly being asked, ‘How can I tell what insect is doing the destructive work?’ Well, you can tell partly by the work done, and partly by seeing the insect itself. The latter is not always so easy to accomplish.

If stalks of tender plants are cut clean off, be pretty sure the cutworm is abroad. What does he look like? Well, that is a hard question because his family is a large one. Should you see sometime a grayish striped caterpillar, you may know it is a cutworm. But because of its habit of resting in the ground during the day and working by night, it is difficult to catch sight of one. The cutworm is around early in the season ready to cut the flower stalks of hyacinths. When the peas come on a bit later, he is ready for them. A very good way to block him off is to put paper collars, or tin ones, about the plants. These collars should be about an inch away from the plant.

Of course, plant lice are more common. Those we see are often green in colour. But they may be red, yellow or brown. Lice are easy enough to find since they are always clinging to their host. As sucking insects they have to cling close to a plant for food, and one is pretty sure to find them.

Biting insects do their work, and then go hide. That makes them much more difficult to deal with.

The striped beetle, attacks young melons and squash leaves. It eats the leaf by riddling out holes in it. This beetle, as its name implies, is striped. The back is black with yellow stripes running lengthwise.

Then there are the slugs, which are garden pests. The slug will devour almost any garden plant, whether it be a flower or a vegetable. They lay lots of eggs in old rubbish heaps.

Rose slugs do great damage to rose bushes. They eat out the body of the leaves, so that just the veining is left. They are soft-bodied, green above and yellow below.

The slugs do more harm in the garden than almost any other single insect pest. You can discover them in the following way. There is a trick for bringing them to the surface of the ground in the day time. You see, they rest during the day below ground. So just water the soil in which you think the slugs are hiding.

How are you to know where they are? They are quite likely to hide near the plants they are feeding on. So water the ground with some nice clean lime water. This will disturb them, and up they’ll poke to see what the matter is.

Beside these most common of pests, pests which attack many kinds of plants, there are special pests for special plants. Beans have pests of their own; so have potatoes and cabbages. In fact, the vegetable garden has many inhabitants.

In the flower garden, lice are very bothersome, the cutworm and the slug have a good time there, too, and ants often get very numerous as the season advances. But for real discouraging insect troubles, the vegetable garden takes the prize.

A common pest in the vegetable garden is the tomato worm. This is a large yellowish or greenish striped worm. Its work is to eat into the young fruit.

A great, light green caterpillar is found on celery. This caterpillar may be told by the black bands, one on each ring or segment of its body.

The squash bug may be told by its brown body, which is long and slender, and by the disagreeable odour from it when killed. The potato bug is another fellow to look out for. It is a beetle with yellow and black stripes down its crusty back. The little green cabbage worm is a perfect nuisance. It is a small caterpillar and smaller than the tomato worm. These are perhaps the most common of garden pests by name.

The Tiger butterfly, named for its yellow color with black stripes, is mainly found in the forests of Central America. Other locations for the tiger butterfly include the Eastern United States and Canada.

This particular species of butterfly loves the warm, moist air as well as plenty of food. They need to bask in the sun in order to be able to fly as their wings will only work if their body temperature is above 86 degrees F. They are among the fastest species of butterflies, with a speed of up to 30 miles per hour.

Their favorite food is the nectar from the abelia shrub. It is also a very strong butterfly with wings that flutter almost effortlessly through the air. They are commonly referred to as swallow tails because they feature long, pointed tails on their hind wings.

The Tiger butterfly has very bright colors, but it doesn’t have to worry too much about predators. This is because eating this particular butterfly will leave them very sick. While it won’t kill them, they definitely remember the affects and avoid eating it again. Their main threat is actually humans because the Tiger butterfly is often sought by collectors.

The Tiger butterfly is very popular throughout the United States. In fact, it is the state insect of Oregon, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Delaware. The wings of a Tiger butterfly are much stronger than many other species. Some scientists believe this is because of the fennel that they eat. It also helps them to survive in harsh winds and even through difficult winter months.

At one time the Tiger butterfly was dwindling in numbers. This is because in the caterpillar stage it was not able to blend well, resulting in being eaten by predators. To protect its existence, they were populated in butterfly gardens in various locations. The best protection was offered to help them thrive.

Today there number of Tiger butterflies is back on a good note, but they continue to be a favorite in butterfly gardens because of their unique yellow and black stripes. You can tell the age of a tiger butterfly by their coloring. Older ones feature faded colors instead of a bright, vivid yellow. They also have wings that appear to be ragged.

For more information about Tiger butterflies, visit these resources:

Featured Creatures

Butterflies and Butterfly Gardening
in West VirginiaCreating a Habitat for Butterflies in the North Coast Pacific Garden

Did you know that dandelions don’t need pollinators? That they produce seeds asexually?

So why the flower, you say?

Well, James S. Miller, a botanist at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, answers that the “seed is produced in a flower. And there is no other place to produce a seed, so you still need the flower.”

I found this bit of information through a science news feed I subscribe to. Check out this link for the full answer. Its from the New York Times, so you may need to subscribe in order to read the article.

The devices and implements used for fighting plant enemies are of two kinds:

1. those used to provide mechanical protection; and
2. those used to apply insecticides and fungicides.

This second of two parts, covers the latter.

Home gardeners have a variety of chemical protection available to keep their gardens healthy — powders, wet sprays and more — as well as tool with which to apply them.

For applying poison powders, you should have a powder gun. If one must be restricted to a single implement, however, it would be best to get one of the hand-power, compressed-air sprayers. These are used for applying wet sprays, and should come with one of the several forms of mist-making nozzles. The non-cloggable automatic type being the best.

For more extensive work, a barrel pump, mounted on wheels, is desirable, but one of the above will do a great deal of work in little time. Extension rods for use in spraying trees and vines may be obtained for either.

For operations on a very small scale a good hand-syringe may be used, but as a general thing it will be best to invest a few dollars more and get a small tank sprayer, as this throws a continuous stream or spray and holds a much larger amount of the spraying solution.

Whatever type you choose, get a brass machine — it will out-wear three or four of those made of cheaper metal, which succumbs very quickly to the, corroding action of the strong poisons and chemicals used in them.

The devices and implements used for fighting plant enemies are of two kinds:

1. those used to provide mechanical protection; and
2. those used to apply insecticides and fungicides.

This first of two parts, covers the former.

The covered frame is the most useful of the mechanical methods of protecting plants. It consists usually of a wooden box, some eighteen inches to two feet square and about eight inches high, covered with glass, protecting cloth, mosquito netting or mosquito wire. The first two coverings have, of course, the additional advantage of retaining heat and protecting from cold, making it possible by their use to plant earlier than is otherwise safe. They are used extensively in getting an extra early and safe start with cucumbers, melons and the other vine vegetables.

Simpler devices for protecting newly-set plants, such as tomatoes or cabbage, from the cut-worm, are stiff, tin, cardboard or tar paper collars, which are made several inches high and large enough to be put around the stem and penetrate an inch or so into the soil. I remember in elementary school the annual “Save Your Milk Carton” drives to collect used milk cartons for local farmers to use in this way.

Another sort of garden device protects them from their own weight and is used to support them. These devices include stakes, trellises, wires, etc. Altogether too little attention usually is given these, as with proper care in storing over winter they will not only last for years, but add greatly to the convenience of cultivation and to the neat appearance of the garden.