Wild Flower
A wild-flower garden has a most captivating sound. One thinks of long tramps in the woods, collecting material, and then of the fun in fixing up a real for sure wild garden.
Many people state they have no luck at all with such a garden. It is not a question of luck, but a question of understanding, for wild flowers are like people and apiece has its personality. What a plant has been accustomed to in Nature it desires always. In fact, when removed from its own sort of living conditions, it sickens and dies. That is enough to tell us that we should copy Nature herself. Suppose you are hunting wild flowers. As you choose certain flowers from the woods, notice the soil they are in, the place, conditions, the surroundings, and the neighbours.
Suppose you find dog-tooth violets and wind-flowers growing near together. Then place them so in your own new garden. Suppose you find a certain violet enjoying an open situation; then it should always have the same. You see the point, do you not? If you wish wild flowers to grow in a tame garden make them feel at home. Cheat them into nearly believing that they are still in their native haunts.
Wild flowers ought to be transplanted after blossoming time is over. Take a trowel and a basket into the woods with you. As you take up a few, a columbine, or a hepatica, be sure to take with the roots some of the plant’s own soil, which must be packed about it when replanted.
The bed into which these plants are to go should be prepared carefully before this trip of yours. Surely you do not wish to bring those plants back to move over a day or night before planting. They should go into new quarters at once. The bed needs soil from the woods, deep and rich and full of leaf mold. The under drainage system should be excellent. Then plants are not to go into water-logged ground. Some people think that all wood plants should have a soil saturated with water. But the woods themselves are not water-logged. It might be that you will need to dig your garden up very deeply and place some stone in the bottom. Over this the top soil should go. And on top, where the top soil once was, place a new layer of the rich soil you brought from the woods.
Before planting water the soil well. Then as you make places for the plants place into apiece hole some of the soil which belongs to the plant which is to be place there.
I think it would be a rather nice plan to have a wild-flower garden giving a succession of bloom from primeval spring to late fall; so let us begin off with March, the hepatica, spring beauty and saxifrage. Then comes April bearing in its arms the beautiful columbine, the tiny bluets and wild geranium. For Might 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 choose the gay butterfly weed for July. Let turtle head, aster, Joe Pye weed, and Queen Anne’s alter make the rest of the season brilliant until frost.
Let us have a bit about the likes and dislikes of these plants. After you are once started you’ll keep on adding to this wild-flower list.
There is no one who doesn’t love the hepatica. Before the spring has really decided to come, this tiny flower pokes its head up and puts all else to shame. Tucked under a covering of dry leaves the blossoms move for a ray of warm sunshine to bring them out. These embryo flowers are further fortified by a fuzzy covering. This reminds one of a similar conserving covering which new fern leaves have. In the spring a hepatica plant wastes no time on getting a new suit of leaves. It makes its old ones do until the blossom has had its day. Then the new leaves, started to be sure before this, have a chance. These delayed, are ready to help out next season. You will find hepaticas growing in clusters, sort of family groups. They are likely to be found in rather open places in the woods. The soil is found to be rich and loose. So these should go only in partly shaded places and under good soil conditions. If planted with other woods specimens give them the benefit of a rather exposed position, that they might catch the primeval spring sunshine. I should cover hepaticas over with a light litter of leaves in the fall. During the last days of February, unless the weather is extreme take this leaf covering away. You’ll find the hepatica blossoms all ready to poke up their heads.
The spring beauty hardly grants the hepatica to get ahead of her. With a white flower which has kickshaw tracings of pink, a thin, wiry stem, and narrow, grass-like leaves, this spring flower can't be mistaken. You will find spring beauties growing in great patches in rather open places. Plant a number of the roots and grant the sun good opportunity to get at them. For this plant adores the sun.
The other March flower mentioned is the saxifrage. This belongs in quite a different sort of environment. It is a plant which grows in dry and rocky places. Often one will find it in chinks of rock. There is an old tale to the effect that the saxifrage roots twine about rocks and work their way into them so that the rock itself splits. Anyway, it is a rock garden plant. I have found it in dry, sandy places right on the borders of a huge rock. It has white flower clusters borne on hairy stems.
The columbine is another plant that is quite likely to be found in rocky places. Standing below a ledge and looking up, one sees nestled here and there in rocky crevices one plant or more of columbine. The nodding red heads bob on wiry, slender stems. The roots do not strike deeply into the soil; in fact, often the soil hardly covers them. Now, just because the columbine has tiny soil, it does not signify that it is indifferent to the soil conditions. For it always has lived, and always should live, under good drainage conditions. I wonder if it has struck you, how really hygienic plants are? Plenty of fresh air, proper drainage, and good food are fundamentals with plants.
It is evident from study of these plants how simple it is to find out what plants like. After studying their feelings, then do not make the mistake of huddling them all together under poor drainage conditions.
I always have a feeling of individualized affection for the bluets. When they come I always feel that now things are beginning to settle down outdoors. They begin with rich, lovely, tiny delicate blue blossoms. As June gets hotter and hotter their colour fades a bit, until at times they look quite worn and white. Some people call them Quaker ladies, others innocence. Under any study they are charming. They grow in colonies, sometimes in sunny fields, sometimes by the road-side. From this we learn that they are more particular about the open sunlight than about the soil.
If you desire a flower to pick and use for bouquets, then the wild geranium is not your flower. It droops very swiftly after picking and nearly immediately drops its petals. But the purplish flowers are showy, and the leaves, while rather coarse, are deeply cut. This latter effect gives a certain boldness to the plant that is rather attractive. The plant is found in rather moist, partly shaded portions of the woods. I like this plant in the garden. It adds good colour and permanent colour as long as blooming time lasts, since there is no goal in picking it.
There are numbers and numbers of wild flowers I might have suggested. These I have mentioned were not given for the purpose of a flower guide, but with just one end in view your understanding of how to study soil conditions for the work of starting a wild-flower garden.
If you fear results, take but one or two flowers and study just what you select. Having mastered, or better, become acquainted with a few, add more another year to your garden. I think you will love your wild garden ideal of all before you are through with it. It is a real study, you see.