PART II.. The Garden At the Window.

THE GARDEN AT THE WINDOW.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GARDEN UPON THE BALCONY.

Exposure of the Balconies.--The Balcony to the North.--Irish Ivy, Hepaticas, Digitalis (Foxglove), Mimulus (Monkey Flower), Hypericum (St. John’s-wort), Nemophila, Violets, Periwinkles.--The Balcony to the East.--Cobæa, Spanish Beans, Volubilis.--Suspended Flower Vases.--Disposition of the Flowers upon the Balcony to the East.--Lilacs, Gillyflowers, Pinks, Pansies, Mignionette.--The Balcony to the West.--Sticking Slips of Pelargoniums and Chrysanthemums.--Management of the Growth of the Slips of Pelargonium.--Of the Slips of Chrysanthemums.--Chinese Method.--European Method.--The Balcony to the South.--Sowing Seeds.--Precautions against the Sun.

Exposure of the Balconies.

The title of this work imposes on me the obligation of first saying something to you of all that it is possible to do in horticulture without leaving your house. I hope I have showed you, ladies, that to satisfy your enlightened taste for beautiful, ornamental plants, and to occupy a part of your leisure time very agreeably, nothing more is necessary than gardening in a parlor. But this in no way prevents your giving also some of your attention to the only out-door garden which is possible to the greater portion of the inhabitants of large populous cities--the garden at the window.

Before any thing else, you must consider the exposure of your windows; for the question is no longer how to cultivate living plants in the artificial atmosphere of an inhabited chamber, or a portable greenhouse. The garden plants at the window are destined to live in the open air, if, indeed, the gaseous fluid of cities, which is alone at their disposal, merits the name of air. The greater part of the time, however, they do not live there: reared in real gardens by real gardeners, bought in full flower to shine for some days only, they make haste to die in a medium that is not really air, and where, consequently, one cannot exact of them to live. Your windows are either exposed to the north, to the east, the west, or the south; or their exposure is intermediary between these four points.

The Balcony to the North.

A balcony with a full northern exposure, particularly if it looks out on a street of only moderate width, and is situated too low down to escape from the emanations below, is in a position presenting the worst conditions as regards horticulture. Does this mean that we need not attempt gardening there? Far from it. It means only that the choice of plants with which it is possible to adorn our garden is very limited; for all have need, more or less, of contact with the rays of the sun.

First, you must surround the balustrade and the framework of the window with a decoration of ivy, which will give you a perpetual verdure. There are several varieties, the best of which is the Irish ivy; its growth more rapid, and its green less sombre, than the common sort. If you take care to curtail such shoots as grow too long, and to pull off such leaves as turn from green to yellow, the Irish ivy will surround your window to the north with a drapery of ever-verdant vegetation, which will serve to bring out advantageously the few flowers that it is possible to cultivate in this exposure. The hepaticas, blue and rose-colored--the lily of the valley--the digitalis, (foxglove,) violet and white--the mimulus, (monkey flower,)--the large flowered hypericum, (St. John’s-wort,)--and the charming nemophila,--are all plants which, as they grow naturally by the side of great forests, may consequently do without the sun. These, with the violet and the periwinkle for their modest companions, will be the principal elements of decoration for your garden at the window with a northern exposure.

If, regardless of expense, you be fully determined to have on this balcony all the plants of the season, then procure and place them there, despite of the short duration of flowers in this exposure. You will do this knowing beforehand that the plants will die some time after flowering--an annoying result, which, however, cannot be avoided; it forms part of the cost which must be paid for the pleasure of having them there.

The Balcony to the East.

On a balcony to the east--if the street be a tolerably wide one, and the balcony belong to a story high enough to receive a ration of air, if not very pure, at least supportable--gardening can be practised on a grand scale.

The window may be surrounded with climbing cobœa, instead of ivy. This is a plant of very elegant foliage, although its flowers have but little brilliancy. You can give to it for companions Spanish beans and volubilis. These two would not have flowered at all to the north; nor will they flower to the east either, as they would do to the west or the south. Their flowers, nevertheless, will, by their lively tints, make an agreeable variety of colors in the decoration of your window with the eastern exposure.

Suspended Flower Vases.

Giving to this decoration the graceful form of an arch, by means of a simple hoop nailed to the two frames of the window, you must join with it the accessory ornament of an earthen-ware vase of elegant form, in which to place a common flower pot containing ornamental plants; some with straight stalks--such as petunias or red-flowered geraniums; others with hanging stems--such as Chinese saxifrage, the runners of which, like those of the strawberry, bloom at each joint while floating freely in the air. Similar vases are appropriate ornaments for the windows of all other exposures except the northern. During the cold season they can be taken in, and hung to the ceiling like chandeliers; and it is easy to procure such as will perform the office of veritable chandeliers, being set round with sockets for holding candles, choice plants--agaves, for instance--occupying the centre, whilst hanging plants, pouring over, as it were, through the spaces between the candles, depend from the rim of the vase.

Disposition of the Flowers on the Balcony to the East.

On the eastern balcony, besides the plants before pointed out for the northern exposure, a great variety of common plants--which are not the less agreeable for being common--may succeed each other all the year round. That you may not deprive yourself of the use of the balcony, in case of your liking occasionally to stand there, you must take care to place such shrubs as roses and Persian lilacs at the two ends; next to them, such herbaceous plants as are somewhat tall--gillyflowers or pinks, for instance; then the rest in the middle. The very low ones--pansies, auriculas, or mignionette--should be in a shallow zinc vessel, such as is used for flower-stands. Thus, when at your window, you feel as if surrounded by all the perfumery of your toilet; and you will not be deprived of the use of your balcony, when it pleases you to go out upon it to breathe there the best air that the city affords at this season--that is, a compound consisting of a little air and a great deal of dust. As you would not wish to quarrel with your neighbors, nor your landlord, nor the police, you must take care to keep under the pots and boxes ornamenting your balconies vessels of varnished earthen ware, sufficiently deep to hold the overflowings of the waterings; you will thereby avoid staining the front of the house, and giving to passers-by a sort of shower bath which may not be to their taste. During prolonged droughts the foliage of the plants of your garden at the window may probably change from green to gray--thanks to a thick coat of dust; in which case, you must, at least once a week, have these plants taken, one by one, to the sink in your kitchen, and there, by means of a watering-pot with a rose pierced with very small holes, give them, one after the other, a good washing, such as they receive from a pretty long shower of rain.

All the flowers of the season--from the violet of March to the chrysanthemum of December--may succeed one another on the balcony exposed to the east. Perhaps the heliotrope (which requires a great deal of sun) and the lantanas, and some others, may be exceptions; these will, at any rate, do better to the west and south.

The Balcony to the West.

On the western exposure you have carte blanche; every ornamental plant may pass the warm season there. You can place there, for the whole summer, myrtles, oranges, rose laurels, pomegranates, camellias, kalmias, and azaleas, which belong in winter to the garden in the house. Two sorts of plants, alike agreeable,--the pelargoniums and the Indian chrysanthemums,--can be easily propagated there, by slips stuck in the way I have already shown you. Nor is there any need of a portable greenhouse this time: you may stick them simply in pots filled with good earth, taking care to place over your slips, for the first eight or ten days, a tumbler turned upside down, pressing down the edge slightly into the earth. After the slips have taken, remove the tumblers, and water the young plants once or twice a week with a good glass of dish-water that you have had put aside for this purpose by the cook; you will see with what vigor they put out. I shall take this occasion to give you some advice that will be useful to you, on the manner of training the pelargoniums and chrysanthemums that you have propagated by slips.

Method of training the Pelargonium Slips.

A slip of pelargonium, left to itself, shoots at hazard right and left, puts forth a quantity of foliage and flowers badly: this is what the French gardeners, adopting a term applied generally to colts, call badly broken. When you see it well rooted, and beginning to shoot vigorously, pinch off the top. The two or three shoots next below this will develop in side branches of nearly equal strength; destroy all that put out below these, retaining them alone to form a regular head. If one of these branches runs up, and is impatient to pass the others, do not hesitate to pinch it off. Below this point two shoots must be left at first--one of them to be taken off at the end of eight or ten days. Thus will equality in the vegetation of the pelargonium be maintained. These attentions will be a true pleasure to you; you will witness their effect immediately; and the flowering of your pelargoniums thus managed will be as equal and as perfect as is natural to the different species of this beautiful genus.

Training Chrysanthemum Slips.

Chrysanthemums propagated by slips should be treated in the same manner, according to the same principles. If you belonged, ladies, to the good society of Pekin, instead of to that of our country, the following is the way you would treat your chrysanthemums: After having planted each one of your slips in a deep and slender vase, you would direct your care to the development of the terminal shoots; as shoots made their appearance, they would be pitilessly destroyed. The chrysanthemum thus treated will gain a great deal in height, and will end by forming at its summit a single tuft of flowers, of which flowers one only must be allowed to remain: this one will arrive at a most extraordinary degree of development. It is thus that the wives of the mandarins cultivate the chrysanthemum--the flower of their special predilection. Every year, in the great cities of the Celestial Empire, there are exhibitions specially for chrysanthemums, where every body sends their flowers, and where prizes are decreed for the tallest plants; not as to the most beautiful flowers, but to the most beautiful flower, each plant having but one.

To every country its custom, the proverb says. To ourselves, “outside barbarians” as we are, the chrysanthemum, cultivated in the Chinese fashion, appears, and with reason, completely devoid of grace. You will take care, then, by means of the same pinching process practised upon the pelargoniums, to compel your chrysanthemums to form a head consisting of three or four branches of equal strength, well furnished with flowers, making the plant of such a height from the ground as may be suited to the disposable place on your balcony, and leaving to each branch the number of flowers which it sees fit to have.

The Balcony to the South.

It is upon the balcony exposed to the south, ladies, that you can practise the most varied horticulture--a balcony to the south being the border of a parterre on a reduced scale. There, in pots filled with an equal mixture of earth and manure, you may produce, by sowing, all the annual ornamental plants--pansies, Queen Margarets (China-asters), balsams, tagetis (French and African marigolds), petunias, and coreopsis; and to these sowings you will be indebted for this part of the decoration of all your balconies and of your flower-stand. For, upon a balcony with a southern exposure, may be made to grow, from the seed, plants, not only for yourself, but for all your friends and acquaintances besides.

Precautions against the Sun.

But the success of this part of your gardening depends on one precaution, for the want of which all would fail. The ardent sun of the summer must never strike directly on the outside of your pots.

In their natural situation, the roots of plants, plunged into the soil, receive only a heat tempered by the coolness imparted to them by the soil beneath. In pots, on the contrary, the extremities of these roots, which line the inside of the pot, and which are the most tender part of them, are literally burnt when the sun shines on its external surface. You must not think that repeated waterings will remedy this: if you water the plants often, the roots in pots exposed to the sun, being then in contact with hot water, will be boiled instead of being roasted, which will come exactly to the same thing, so far as their life is concerned. It is then indispensable to have a plank, inside of the balustrade of your balcony facing the south, which plank, its edge touching the floor, must reach as high as the top of the largest pots. The outside of the pots being shaded by this plank, the roots of the plants will experience only a moderate degree of heat; for any excess of this may then be prevented by frequent waterings. So says our author with reference to the climate of Europe. In ours, however, plants in pots require an additional protection from the sun--the shade of a tree, or an awning, or something of the sort.