A WINDOW BOX IN JUNE THE BOOK OF TOWN & WINDOW GARDENING BY Mrs F. A. BARDSWELL JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK.  MCMIII WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES....

Courage is wanted to write a book about Town-gardening. Is there such a thing? Some would say “No; cats, fogs, and smuts forbid.” Yet how inseparable from London is the thought of flowers! Can we picture the West End on a summer’s day without them? The dust-laid, freshly sprinkled squares and streets, where behind half-drawn blinds there is the fragrance of many blossoms; the bright harness of horses jangling as they champ the bit, a knot of flowers at every bridle; flower-sellers with baskets a

Since Londoners have learned that life without scent and colour is not worth living, England’s capital has become a City of Flowers. It is not only Covent Garden and the great floral shops of the West End that blaze with blossoms; the same idea has spread into every little outlying suburb, wherein no self-respecting greengrocer, however small his frontage, would fail to fill a shelf or two with fresh-cut flowers several times a week. Here every careful housewife holds her Saturday marketing inco

The spring months over, and our early blossom faded, how joyfully one hails the crowd of summer flowers, that appear as if by magic, begging us to buy them. Market-carts and barrows filled with “bedders” meet us at every turn, and their wafted sweetness in square and street is intoxicating. We must clutch these old joys and hold them. How now about the window-box? To be practical, two courses are open to us. Bulbs are not at all fond of being moved; they like to rest in peace while their grass g

Some of us have a balcony as well as a window-box. Here is a field indeed; we have more space, more opportunity for display. Rescued from the hands of the florist, balcony-gardening becomes one of the most interesting of occupations. Here we may aspire to creepers and climbers in a good aspect, even to Roses. Imagine it in London! Climbers in pots that make thick summer growth are easiest to manage; these we can get fresh every season, and they greatly brighten up the old friends that have lived

“O, green is the colour of faith and truth.” When one comes to write of roof and back-yard gardens the pen must run less glibly; such oases in the dust and drouth of towns are few and rare. The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening, and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss, but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make t

“Along the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves and ways—every leaf a miracle.” A kindly K.C. of my acquaintance is always telling us we ought to provide pianos for the poor. “So elevating”—this is his argument. Mine is, that pianos want too much practising—poor people have no time for it; much better give them window-boxes and a spade. A taste for gardening raises the most uneducated, and the mixed elements of chance and skill secure perennial freshness, giving a zest to the pursuit

“When spring unlocks the flowers.” Now and again we meet with beginners who really seem hardly to know one end of a plant from another. Always buying their flowers in bunches, they have no idea how they look when growing, and seeing flowers placed side by side that have been sent from the widest different zones and climates, they are not even very sure which of them may be claimed as English grown. Shiploads of flowers from warmer latitudes keep London and other large towns far in advance of the

“Oh, give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.” “Sweet leaves to the air.” We have said a good deal about Flowering Plants for town decoration; there are also non-flowering sets of plants to choose from, which are just as lovely and far more uncommon; I mean the grand array of foliage plants. Some years ago it was my good fortune to be present at one of the prettiest weddings of the season. Not one of the bridesmaids wore a flower. Every bouquet was made of leaves, shaded, striped and coloured;

Air is invisible, and earth a very tangible thing indeed, which makes us forget sometimes how much air does for us, to feed and nourish. We do not only live in it, we live of it; and by we I mean all breathing creatures, whether men or lower animals or plants. What brings the truth most home to us is having to do without air—in a London fog, for instance. We have been talking a great deal about the flowers and plants of London. Alas! very few of them are grown there; most of them have to be impo

During the rush of the London season many hostesses, much as they love to have their houses made sweet and beautiful with flowers, find it impossible to attend to the work of decoration themselves; they must entrust the task to others. To meet the want of châtelaines such as these, there is the lady decorator, with her train of flower-fairies, ready to fill the breach. And they will not only bring us flowers; lights, too, they can adjust at will, not fire-flies but electric, which, after all, ar

“The size of a garden has very little to do with its merit,—it is the size of the heart and brain and the goodwill of the owner that will make his garden either delightful or dull.”— G. Jekyll. The small Suburban Garden—it is time some one said a good word for it. What other place has been so much abused, maligned? It may, it does, in fact, go on improving with the march of time and the general up-waking of the gardening world; but the ill name sticks, and will most likely continue to do so till

“United, yet divided.” One matter of the deepest import confronts the owner of the small suburban garden, from which his prototype in the country is generally free; it is the question of “next door.” Inevitable, critical, all-important, almost uncontrollable as it is, “next door” has to be faced and made the best of. Sometimes the best is very good indeed; sometimes there is no best, but a thorn. In the suburbs a kind of etiquette exists which helps to smooth the way. People must not stare at ea

“Where a green, grassy turf is all I crave.” When people first take possession of the new suburban garden, be it ever so small or empty, three things are sure to be found in it; even the builder bestows as much as that upon them, though it may not be much to boast of either in quantity or quality. The three things are grass, ground, and gravel; grass for the tiny lawn, ground for the flower-beds, and gravel for the paths. Now, how are these to be apportioned? Some people crave for nothing but fl

A TOWN FERNERY “How I do envy you your bank of Ferns” is the remark made to me almost daily during the summer months when the green background of our outdoor fernery looks so pretty as it throws up the colours of the flower-beds on the little lawn that flanks it. This is the brightest bit of the whole garden, and its beauty is very largely due to the Ferns. Then we get talking about Ferns, and everybody says, “What a pity Ferns are out of fashion.” This is what I think. There was a Fern-craze ab

No cottage, villa, hut, nor any other human dwelling, however small and gardenless, need be without some leaves and flowers, for it must have walls, and up them may the Ivy wander and the Jasmine cling. Quaintly enough, both Vine and Fig tree are tolerant of town air, and, suggestive as they are of sylvan and patriarchal life, might flourish in Seven-Dials if there were room enough for them to grow. The Vine, in fact, is one of the best climbers it is possible to find for London and the suburbs;

A rock-garden , even in a simple way, is a great joy, and there is no reason why we should not try to possess one even in a town or in the suburbs. Writers in the best horticultural papers are sometimes a little discouraging; they tell us that the rock-garden near a house is out of place, and that it should never be made near trees, nor buildings, nor any other objects, but stand apart in stony isolation; they also tell us by no means to make a rockery ourselves, any more than we should try to m

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