Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-04-23

Telegraph to-day announces a
IL gardening contest open to
everybody in the city, with
prizes ranging from $25 to 81. The
Object is to make Harrisburg a more
beautiful city in 1915 than it ever was
before and to encourage the planting
of flowers, shrubbery and lawns.
There is no reason why this city
should not be a mass of bloom from
early Spring until frost cuts down the
plants in the Fall. Only few years
back, when Harrisburg was not much
more than an overgrown country town,
every yard contained its garden. The
home that had no flower beds, no mat
ter how small the premises, was look
ed upon with suspicion, as the resid-
ing place of a slothful. careless family.
But with the growth of the town and
the encroachment of buildings upon
the land, Harrisburg forgot its good
oll-fashioned ways in a large measure
ard began to take on the airs of the
crowded city. Here and there a gar-
d, flourishes, but they are all too few,
People with little or no ground at their
di isposal have not thought it worth
while to attempt any planting. al
though there are very few indeed who
do not enjoy flowers and who are not
botter for associating with growing
things in their daily lives.
This is a mistaken attitude. A
beautiful garden may be cultivated
eyen in so small a space as a window
box. Front porches offer really extern
sive possibilities for elaborate garden
ing schemes and there is no limit to
what may be done with a front lawn
or a backyard at ones disposal.
How beautiful Harrisburg would
if every house front We're decorated
With well planted colorfuI window
box gardens and what joy it would
lie to walk about the streets of the
city in summer if every front porch
had its screen of vines and its banis-
ter boxes of flowers, and if every front
and rear yard presented to the eye
he myriad forms of plant life that
might be made to flourish there.
This is no idle dream. The posi-
bilities are at hand. 1t only remains
for Harrisburg people to display inter-
est enough and energy enough to de-
velop them.
1t was for this reason that the
Telegraph's offer was extended to the
Civic Club. The good ladies of that
organization have done more for Har-
risburg in this respect than is general
ly known. Hundreds of children make
their little gardens every year because
the Civic Club has encouraged them
to do so. Now the time has come
for the club to widen its activities and
this newspaper is pleased to be one of
the instruments for the extension of
the clubs City Beautiful plan.
One hundred dollars will be distri-
buted among the gardeners of Harris
burg during the coming summer. If
the plan meets with success it is al
together likely that this sum will be
Increased next year. At all events the
prizes are worth trying for They
have been so arranged as to give
everybody an opportunity to win one.
Even a lodger with room for a single
window box at his disposal may come
in for one of them. There is none
so humble but that he or she may
have opportunity of taking one of the
Telegraph's prizes and to thereby help
make Harrisburg a pleasanter place
in which to live.
This applies not only to private
residences, but to industrial plants
factories. churches. frehouses and
public buildings.
Other towns and cities have devel-
oped their gardening contests to the
point of municipal institutions. George
w. Cable. in his delightful book The
American Garden" calls attention to
the success of this movement in North
ampton, Mass, which is a town not
nearly so large as Harrisburg, but
where after the gardening contests
have been carried on for a period of
five years there are 1913 gardens in
competition In other words. 1913
homes. many of which formerly boast
ed of no more attractive surroundings
than those of some Harrisburg houses
are now the centers or attractive gar
dens and Northampton has become
one OF the most beautiful spots in
New England.
What can be done in NORTHAMPTON
can be done in Harrisburg Let us
all get together and work for the
beautificStion of the old town during
the summer of 1915