Early this month put in pansies and violas but be sure to use good heavy transplanted stock to insure early bloom. Self colors in lots of 100 will be best to use where there are large spaces to fill over the tulips and daffodils and other bulb plantings.
Color harmonies are so easily planned and executed if time is taken to do this in advance of the order and receipt of the shipment. All the pansy colors and those of the violas are rich and velvety and wonderful pictures can be made with them. Get your orders in early and the beds ready for planting and then when the small sturdy plants arrive there will be no delay in setting them.
Garden clubs should order for their members and secure plants in solid colors so that they can be delivered in small number to enable their members to execute color plans without having to buy an oversupply. Some Church Circles and other organizations also take these orders but the main thing now is to get the plants and put them in the ground early this month.
Golden pansies with blue, lavender or purple hyacinths are striking and good. Soft pink tulips with a bed of lavender pansies or violas will repay the work of securing and planting. White hyacinths or tulips set among the violet pansies are wonderful. So it goes into infinite variations of tone and beauty.
Gardeners who have room for only small groups should select their plantings even more carefully than those with larger spaces. Twenty-five mixed tulips can be used effectively in a small garden and if these are planted with violas or pansies of one color only, the picture will be a pleasing one.
Darwin tulips are standard but other varieties are good and desirable if there is room for them. Put them in now.
Crocuses and the small Roman hyacinths in white and blue and lavender and rose are for permanent plantings. Use them along the edges of the beds or in groups through the borders and be sure to give them a setting of soft color either from annuals or the pansies and violas.
Daffodils and scillas which were planted in September fill the spaces allotted to them with these delightful, richly colored plants now. The dying foliage of the bulb beds mar the garden spring pictures and it is necessary to hide them by using perennials around them.
Fertilize the bulb beds of other years at this time, but use a recommended fertilizer not a lawn fertilizer. Give them a good dose of well balanced fertilizer and rake it in well without disturbing the shoots which will soon be showing. Study the bulb offerings in catalogues and invest as much as you can in the delightful new and old varieties of the ones to be planted now.
Frost usually comes with Thanksgiving and then heavy plantings begin. Owners of newly built homes are most anxious to get their grounds planted and gardens started. Plant lists should be made out early and orders sent off for the broad-leaved evergreens. Flowering trees and shrubs should be selected along with the evergreen and by no means neglect to order your roses. Get the ground ready for these plantings and hope they will come to you late in the month or early in the next before the Christmas rush is on.
New spaces must be cleared of rubbish and builders’ trash, beds dug out and if the soil is pure sand fill in with good leaf mold and clean loam and when your plants come you can dig the holes and put in your compost and finish the work. Lime and plaster left on the grounds will make bare spots in which nothing will grow. Three times in more than three years I planted a dogwood tree at the front of my porch only to have it die very promptly. At last we dug out the whole area and found that under the space there was a lot of lime and plaster and concrete lumps left from the builder’s work. Granted that this should have b.en done in the first place the lesson was learned in the Ward way and now while no dogwood grows there a fine Arizona cypress does along with a very beautiful native Ilex opaca.
Ten years ago we said, plant roses in February. Since then hard experience has taught that the best time to put out roses here is late November.