Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1941-04-03
Gardeners Nook
BY GARDEN CLUB EDITOR

Will your garden grow happiness
as well as flowers?
Plant a garden for the children.
1t will teach them to like flowers
Start with bed of pansies. Most
children like them.
Remarks one mother, "There are
many expensive advantages our chill
dren have not had, but at least they
have host of happy garden memoir
les to carry through life.
Suggestions for the rock garden.
Flowers Crown Rocks.
A collection of rocks does not make
a rock garden! The flower is the
thing, for after all gardens are de-
signed primarily to display plants.
The rocks are secondary, and while
they have decidedly decorative pos
sibilities, they are fundamentally liv-
ing quarters for the plants Their
size and permanence will make them
vital factors in the garden plan, but
it will be test of your ingenuity to
see how completely you can subdue
them into acting as a naturalistic
background for your flowers.
Nature is Less Formal.
Nature is the best model to copy in
making rock garden. She rarely
stands her rocks on end in rows, or
has a collection of limestone, sand
stone, granite, and tufa all within a
single square yard. Forget rock
gardens you have seen, and think
back to rocky lodges where you have
picnicked. Remember those parallel
layers with soil and little ferns ooz-
ing out the cracks? Remember the
piles of fallen rock at the bottom of
the hill, softened with a mantle of
dirt and plants? Natures garden is
weathered. Her rocks are partly
buried or part of continuous strata.
Let such be your goal.
How to Plant Rocks.
Place the rocks in your new rock
garden carefully, according to some
thoughtfully considered plan. Decide
upon your high spots, low spots, and
paths. Have good loamy or sandy
soil at hand to be filled in behind
or under your rocks, for your plants
can't live on air. Rock chips may
be used for finishing off the top. Each
rock should be tilted backward so
that moisture will run back to the
| thirsty roots, and it should be imbed-
ded more than halfway in the soil if it
is going to look as though it belonged.
Low-growing perennials in your
rock garden should include: basket
of-gold (Alyssum saxatile); moss pink
| (PhloX subulata); dwarf iris in blue,
purple, and yellow; rockcress CARA
bis); snow-in-summer (Cerastium to-
mentosum); rock soapwort (Saponaria
ocymoides); blue phlox (Phlox di-
varicata); and Iceland poppy (Pa-
payer nudicaule).
Iris should not be fortified with
manure or with vegetable matter
of any kind. These create an acid
soil condition that destroys the plants.
Bone meal and potash are the best
| fertilizers to use.
Soil around fruit trees should be
loosened about April l and fertilizer
dug around them. Wood ashes make
wonderful fertilizer for either fruit
or shade trees.
Chives, related to the onion, are
not only edible but they are dec
orative. Their flowers, little Law
ender bells, are showiest at iris time.
1t must be admitted that they are
onion-scented.
Gourds will sulk if you plant them
before warm, settled weather. Give
them sunshine, rich food, and some
thing to climb upon.
Birdhouses made of gourds are
decorative and habitable.
Wahoo is more than a yell; it's a
tree! You'll like it in your yard, for
it is small, has brilliant autumn foil
age and quantities of scarlet fruit
resembling bitter-sweet. You'll find
it listed as Euonymus atropurpureus.
OPTIMISM
Last year planted flower seeds and
thought
A few short weeks and magic will be
wrought
With larkspur, marigolds, and peoples
gay.
Alas! l had to go to town one day;
Twas then my chickens every one
turned out
And put my fondest hopes to rout.
The wear before while WAS i'll in bod