Flower garden

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Types of Flower Gardens

From ancient times, there have been various kinds of gardens. And in this age of specialization there are more and more kinds as the years go by. Already the kinds are so many that life and purse would seldom be long enough to secure their possession, even were such a mul- tiplicity of gardens to be desired.

The advantage of these numbers is that they offer infinite suggestion for the making of a garden along composite, as well as specialized, lines. A bit here and a bit there, molded into shape by personality, may be precisely the material needed to create a pleasance that asks to be called by no more definite name than the garden.

After all, taking the human race by and large, this is the best of the many kinds of gardens just a garden and yet one thoroughly thought out in its relation to the house. A variation for every individual is possible, there being no limit to the changes to be rung. As for beauty, there is ample room for all that any one cares to put into it. Nor need such a garden be nondescript; if the borrowing and adapting of ideas is judicious, the garden will have a personal character in nine cases out of ten better than a slavish reproduction of one of the endless number of kinds. It is better in point of appropriateness and better in point of enjoyment.

To borrow and adapt judiciously is relatively easy if common sense be kept in the foreground. Art matters less than good taste and need not seriously disturb the amateur so far as strict ad- herence to set rules, and all that, is concerned. These rules are for the professional makers of gardens bearing high-sounding names.

The more a garden is so broken up that the eye cannot grasp all at once, the more kinds may be drawn upon. At the end of the main path there is, perhaps, a stone bench backed by small evergreens ; this from an Italian garden. A curved bypath discloses a little Japanese scheme, a bank of thyme is from a Shakspere garden, while an herb garden suggested the walk lined with burnet.

This sort of garden-making is always worth doing and the beauty of it is that the working out of the idea may be of gradual growth. On the other hand, a named garden is not worth while at all unless it is substantially what it purports to be. That means careful study, to the end that there may be consistency of design and materials. On top of the study will come much labor and, more likely than not, much expense.

Flower Garden Introduction and History

Bacon, in the famous essay that is an eternal joy to the flower lover, maintains that a garden is "the Purest of Humane pleasures." Certainly all will agree that it is among the purest.

In the nature of things it can be such only by so close an association with the home as to be "part and parcel" of it, as they say in New England. And the more intimate this association the more nearly does the garden approximate the Baconian estimate that it is "the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man."

There must be gardenless homes in these days, more's the pity. But wherever the garden, meaning more particularly the garden of flowers, comes into human life the first thought of all should be its affinity with the home. Unfortunately, this is only too often the very last thought; worse yet, many go on to the end of their existence without realizing the supreme experience.

What is a Flower Garden?

What is a flower garden? Doubtless some would say, if one may judge them by their works, that it is a highly decorative frame for the house, or a showy adjunct thereto; or again that it is a colorful possession the joy of which would be materially lessened were the effect not boldly planned for the eyes of the passerby, or a mere place for the growing of the flowers that one must have.

Now the true garden of flowers is a great deal more. It may be sometimes it must needs be merely a clump of lilies by the doorstep, a rose on ithe porch or a row of chrysanthemums hugging the house. If this means the establishment of a real relationship between the inside of the portal and the outside, there is a garden, and one worthy to be numbered among "the Purest of Humane pleasures." Size matters not, nor design, nor the abundance of flowers.

History of the Flower Garden

So began the earliest American flower gardens gardens that the Colonists made for themselves in New England, in New York and in Virginia. From the home outward they began, at first not straying from the walls of the house. Gradually, as forest and redskin receded, flowers ventured forth into the created yard but never so far that the garden seemed other than the integral part of the home that it should be.

The old Colonial rule call it instinct if you will is the only one worth while. And so simple it is that even a child may read it as he runs. Let the flower garden expand from the heart of the home outward; then you may be sure that you have made a right start.

Flower Garden Design

See Planning a flower garden

How to Succeed with Flowers

see Success with flowers

National Flower Gardens

Italian garden

French garden

English Garden

Japanese garden

Flower Type Gardens

Rose garden

Iris phox garden

Other Types of Gardens

Bog garden

Fruit garden

Herb garden

Kitchen garden

Vegetable garden

Rock garden

Water garden

Wall garden

Moraine garden

Medicinal garden

Old fashioned garden