WILD-FLOWER GARDEN

Wildflowers are species of flowers that have shown themselves to be hardy and self-reproducing, with little attention form the gardener. Although they will grow wild or on their own, they are not necessarily native plants.A wild-flower garden has a most magnetic sound. One dreams up long trampers in the woods, collecting material, and so of the fun introduces up an existent for certain wild garden.

Several people say they have no fortune at all with such a garden. It is not a query of chance, but a query of intellect, for wild flowers are like people and each has its personality. What a plant has been usual to in Nature it wants forever. In fact, when moved out from its own sort of living terms, it sickens and dies. That is sufficient to tell us that we should replicate Nature herself. Suppose you are hunting wild flowers. Since you select certain flowers from the woods, point out the soil they are in, the place, conditions, the surroundings, and the neighbours.

Suppose you detect dog-tooth violets and wind-flowers running near together. Then place them so in your personal new garden. Suppose you get a certain violet enjoying an open situation; then it should always have the same. You see the point, do you not? If you want wild flowers to grow in a cultivated garden make them feel at home. Cheat it into just about trusting that they are still in their native resorts.

Wild flowers ought to be grafted after blooming time is ended. Take a trowel and a basket into the woods with you. As you take up a few, a columbine, or a hepatica, make certain to carry with the roots some of the plant’s own soil, which must be mobbed around it when replanted.

The layer into which these plants are to go should be made carefully before this trip of yours. Certainly you do not like to get those plants back to wait over a day or night before planting. They should go into new quarters immediately. The layer requires soil from the woods, deep and rich and full of leaf mould. The under drain arrangement should be first-class. And so plants are not to go into wet ground. Many people believe that all wood plants should have a soil soaked with water. But the woods themselves are not wet. It may be that you will need to dig your garden up very deeply and set some stone in the bottom. Over this the top soil should go. And on top, where the top soil once was, put a new layer of the rich soil you brought from the woods.

Prior to planting water the soil well. And then as you fix places for the plants put into each hole some of the soil which belongs to the plant which is to be put there.

I suppose it wishful a quite nice plan to have a wild-flower garden giving a sequence of blossom from early spring to late autumn; and so let us start off with March, the hepatica, spring beauty and saxifrage. Then comes April carrying in its arms the gorgeous columbine, the little bluets and wild geranium. For May there are the dog-tooth violet and the wood anemone, false Solomon’s seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wake robin, bloodroot and violets. June will give the bellflower, mullein, bee balm and foxglove. I would pick out the gay butterfly weed for July. Let turtle head, aster, Joe Pye weed, and Queen Anne’s lace create the remain of the season glorious until frost.

Let us have a little about the likes and dislikes of these plants. Later you are once began you’ll continue adding to this wild-flower list.

There has no one who doesn’t love the hepatica. Prior to the spring has truly decided to come, this little flower pokes its head up and sets all else to shame. Puckered under a covering of dry leaves the blooms wait for a ray of warm sunlight to get them out. These conceptus flowers are far protected by a hairy covering. This prompts one of a similar protective covering which new fern leaves have. In the spring a hepatica plant wastes no time about acquiring a new suit of leaves. It makes its old ones do until the bloom has had its day. Then the new leaves, started without doubt before this, have a chance. These delayed-action, are ready to help out next time of year. You will get hepaticas running in bunches, kind of family groups. They are mostly to be found in quite open places in the woods. The soil is found to be rich and light. So these should go exclusive in partly umbrageous places and under good soil conditions. If planted with other woods specimens give them the benefit of a instead exposed position, that they may catch the early spring sunlight. I should cover hepaticas over with a light bedding of leaves in the autumn. During the last days of February, unless the weather condition is extreme take this leaf covering away. You’ll find the hepatica blooms all ready to poke up their heads.

The spring beauty barely allows the hepatica to expand of her. With a white flower which has delicate traces of pink, a thin, lean stem, and narrow, grass-like leaves, this spring flower cannot be mistaken. You will find spring beauties growing in great patches in quite open places. Plant an amount of the roots and permit the sunlight good opportunity to get at them. As these plant loves the sunlight.

The another March flower named is the saxifrage. This lies in quite a different kind of surroundings. It is a plant which grows in dry and rocky places. Often one will find it in tinkles of rock. There has an old story to the issue that the saxifrage roots enlace about rocks and work their way into it so that the rock itself breaks up. Anyhow, it is a rock garden plant. I have found it in dry, sandy places right on the edges of a big rock. It has white flower bunches birthed on hairy stems.

The columbine is another plant that is rather probable to be found in rocky places. Standing below a shelf and looking up, one assures nestled here and there in rocky chaps one plant or more of columbine. The unerect red heads bob on lean, narrow stems. The roots do not move deeply into the soil; in fact, frequently the soil scarcely covers them. Instantly, only because the columbine has least soil, it does not signify that it is neutral to the soil conditions. Since it always has lived, and always should live, under good drainage conditions. I wonder if it has affected you, how really hygienic plants are? Plenty of fresh air, proper drainage, and good food are fundamental principle with plants.

It is observable from analyze of these plants how easy it is to find out what plants wish. After considering their feelings, then do not make the mistake of huddling them all together under poor drainage conditions.

I always have a feeling of personal warmheartedness for the bluets. When they come I always feel that now things are starting out to settle down outside. They begin with rich, beautiful, small soft blue blooms. When June gets hotter and hotter their colour fades a bit, until at times they look quite a tired and white. Some people call them trembler ladies, others innocence. Below whatever name they are pleasing. They raise in colonies, sometimes in sunny fields, sometimes by the road-side. From this we learn that they are more especial around the open sunlight than about the soil.

If you want a flower to pick and use for fragrances, then the wild geranium is not your flower. It sags very rapidly after plucking and almost immediately falls its petals. But the purplish flowers are fancy, and the leaves, while quite common, are deeply cut. This latter effect gives a definite hardihood to the plant that is quite fascinating. The plant is found in quite moist, partially umbrageous portions of the woods. I like this plant in the garden. It brings good colour and permanent colour as long as blossoming time lasts, since there is no object in picking it.

There are numbers and numbers of wild flowers I might have hinted. These I have remarked were not given for the purpose of a flower guide, but with just one end in view your understanding of how to study soil circumstances for the job of setting about a wild-flower garden.

If you fright effects, take just one or two flowers and analyze exactly what you choose. Having perfect, or better, become familiar with a few, add more another year to your garden. I suppose you will enjoy your wild garden best of all before you are done with it. It is a actual study, you examine.