If you want a nice garden next summer, start planning now. That way, you’ll have enough time to figure out several beautiful portraits for each part of the space you have available.
Such is the practice behind gardening the way Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) describes it in his 1910 tome “Manual of Gardening.”
“Every yard should be a picture. That is, the area should be
set off from other areas, and it should have such a character that the
observer catches its entire effect and purpose without stopping to
analyze its parts. The yard should be one thing, one area, with every
feature contributing its part to one strong and homogeneous effect.”
Since this time of the year is ideal for creating wonderful plans about making the garden better than ever next summer, I like to scour Project Gutenberg for books that contain practical advice from experts. I like to read traditional advice from the pre-World War II era to avoid a reliance on synthetic fertilizers.
Bailey’s book is a perfect example of this kind of resource. It’s available for free in ebook or pdf format at Project Gutenberg.
Bailey wrote the second edition of his guide in 1910, when he was 52 years old. By then, he was already Dean of the the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, a renowned botanist, a co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science and a well-known author. He retired in 1913. For more information, refer to Cornell University’s exhibition about Bailey’s life.
His works include: the Horticulturists Rule Book (1890), Principles of Agriculture (1898), The Manual of Gardening (1910), The Apple-Tree (1922) and The Gardener’s Handbook (1934).
The manual makes for pleasant winter reading. Hyde’s north-eastern U.S. experience works for Canada as long as I remember that his northern-most zone is a bit warmer than Montreal’s.
