The making of gardens is decidedly and judiciously conceded to be a Home Amusement, and it is a pity that the new fashion of bedding-out plants, which is so beautiful in our public parks and in the pleasure grounds of the rich, should have seemed to so utterly do away with a taste for the old-fashioned gardens of early English poetry—of Miss Mitford, of every sweet New England dame of the early days, who had her garden, with its “pretty posies,” and its bed of sweet marjoram, lavender, and sage. It is, however, a hopeful sign to see in remote country towns some effort to keep up the old-fashioned idea of a pretty flower-plot, and there are always women who have the gift of making flowers “blow” and grow in a quiet way.

Yet science can help to bring the old-fashioned garden to perfection, as well as to make those artificial beds of many-leaved coleus, and steadier groups. Every garden design, every project of garden furnishing, and every item of garden work, should be governed by this consideration, that it is hard work to fight against Nature, and there is seldom thus a conquest worth obtaining. Aim modestly to gain a victory over the easily-cultivated native flowers at first, and you will secure enjoyment.

Fortunately, if gardening is pursued with earnestness, every soil and every climate will be found to produce some flowers in rare beauty and in unexpected luxuriance. Geometric plans, if well carried out, are very pretty, and the amateur gardener should learn to mass her geraniums, petunias, and pansies, her gladioli, roses, marigolds, and poppies, so as to give a good and really splendid result of color. Nature takes care to send us delicate, pale yellows and lilacs in Spring in her sweet daffy-down-dilly, and the elegant fleurs-de-lis; and the peonies come on mildly with pink and white before they dash into red. Then come the Turkish carpets of the portulaca, and so on until midsummer blazes with poppies, gladioli, and all the gorgeous zinnias. These may all be found in the commonest garden, without mentioning the larkspur, the mignonette, the petunia and the sweet-pea, and a thousand other charming common flowers. The delightful flowers which sow themselves, and those hardy bulbs, the crocus, tulip, lily of the valley, snowdrop, and hyacinth, should not be neglected. A quantity of white-lily bulbs stowed away in the garden reward one year after year with their elegant flowers and fragrance at no cost whatever. Pansies, daisies, and polyanthus keep from season to season, and carnation pinks need to be two years old before they will blossom, while the chrysanthemums make the garden gay in October.

Now for borders to the garden beds. Common grass is the best and easiest, as the gardener’s boy can cut it with a sickle each week and keep it from spreading. Or the little, cheap mosses make a pretty border, as does the periwinkle, which looks so like myrtle. To attempt a border of the gorgeous coleus requires a hothouse and an accomplished gardener. In the common large country garden rows of hollyhocks, as against a stone wall, or marking out the long walks, are most ornamental. Dahlias also are very good in groups. Phlox, that much-abused plant, is also pretty in masses. Asters too, of many varieties, delight the eye, and are easy of culture. In trying to raise shrubs, why not take the American wild pink, or azalea, the laurel and the rhododendron, and, by studying up their habits, capture them?

The best soil for the rhododendron is a peat containing much sand and much vegetable fiber. Any clean, pulverized product of vegetable decay will like them. It is their native food. The laurel is capricious, and resents the act of transplantation; but they will flourish if planted thick enough. They love company, and thrive in it. The best way to treat them is to study their quality, and to give them the same conditions which made them grow so luxuriantly on the hill-side.

But if even these plants resist you, every lady loves a rosarium, and it will go hard with her but she has a rose garden somewhere. The gardeners now sell one hundred rose roots for a dollar, at Rochester, and if planted out and attended to they give a million of dollars in pleasure back again.

Some ladies understand budding, and this is a very interesting process. In this way an army of sweetbriers can be covered with yellow Marshal Neills and royal Jacqueminots. To propagate by layers is, however, the easiest way, if, indeed, one does not prefer to buy them all started. For garden roses we need vigorous growers that are sure to flower freely, and will contribute to the gayety of the garden. One of the best—the old-fashioned damask—if set out well, will blossom for thirty years. A very effective garden of roses is produced by roses pegged down. A deep, rather rich, loamy soil is to be prepared, the position selected being rather open. When the plants are about a foot high peg down the strongest growths. The rose prefers a firm soil. Those who desire to have firm blooms the second season must cut off a few inches of the flowering wood as soon as the first bloom is over, and give the beds a thorough soaking of manure or sewage-water every third or fourth day. But in this, as in every sort of cultivation of an especial flower, one should buy an especial treatise on the subject.

Every lady gardener is troubled by insect pests—the horrid green canker-worm, the little green louse, the potato-bug; these are everywhere. One fights them with all sorts of powders and all sorts of syringes. One very simple cure is not generally known. It is to plant a lettuce beside your rose; the vermin prefers the lettuce. It is the same principle which induced the rich owner of a wine-cellar to put a barrel of whisky beside his best Madeira; the whisky went, but the Madeira stayed. Dirty flower-pots, filled with dry moss, put in the neighborhood, will catch large numbers of these gentry, for vermin are fond of dirt. Dusting with powdered lime, or sulphurized tobacco-dust, will kill the insects which destroy the asters. Lettuces also save the asters, and a bed of green lettuce is not an ugly “bedding-out” plant.

No manure is so good as that common rotted vegetation of the forest. Bring a pailful home from every drive, and it will make your flowers grow. Nothing, also, so good as this for that lovely flower, the pansy, which thus recalls its early start in the forest, The pansy does not require much water, but in very hot, dry weather the beds should be sprinkled at night with a watering-pot.

But these few directions may seem impertinent, as every lady has now the most ample means of reading up about her garden. The cultivation of a few flowers in the house—window gardening—is by far the more essentially a Home Amusement. And, as almost everybody has once bought a lot of greenhouse plants but to see them fade before her eyes, we recommend to all to either raise a slip from the root or to start very young plants in a dark room. Thus accustomed to the atmosphere of the house they are to live in, they do sometimes live.

The hardier roses, the calla-lily, all the geraniums (useful dear creatures), the violets and the pinks, grow well in the house. Hanging pots of calceolarias and healthy primroses are also possible. Some ladies can raise azaleas at home, but they are difficult. Then there is the kangaroo-vine, and the Jerusalem, and all the other very hardy vines. If a large ivy-vine can he induced to grow over a picture-frame, it is a beautiful friend in midwinter.

Then come the delightful hanging baskets, the Wardian fern-cases, the ornamental stands of pot-plants, and the indoor box of earth for planting rice and grass seed, the wild flowers, which now have become exotics, and all the pretty fancies of throwing seed over a wet sponge. Anything green in winter looks lovely. Nothing more charming than the branches of nasturtion growing in water can be imagined. They grow and flower all winter, and the blue convolvulus flourishes well in a hanging basket; so do the common morning-glory and the scarlet bean, both delightful, airy visitors at Christmas.

A wire-work ox-muzzle, filled with moss, makes an admirable basket. It should be painted dark green, and hang over a box of growing flowers, so that it can drip when watered and hurt nothing. Put in the ivy-leaved geranium to drop over its edges; fuchsia, variegated geranium, bright blue lobelia, and the healthful dracÆnas, begonias, and sedums also make a very pretty combination. The gardeners give you wooden baskets filled with flowers, and ivy, and ferns, but it is Home Amusement to make these baskets yourself.

Fern-cases are delightful as winter friends. Wardian cases can be made very cheaply, and their perpetual condensation and shower is a very pretty study in physics. A large case, in which large-sized ferns can be accommodated, is best. As regards cultivation, the first thing that demands attention is the drainage of the case; for, if that is defective, neither ferns nor any other plants can be cultivated successfully. In order to secure good drainage the case should be fitted with a false bottom, into which the water may drain through perforated zinc or iron, on which the rock-work and little bank for the ferns should be placed. The false bottom, being a little kind of tank or drainer, should be perfectly water-tight, so as to protect the carpet, and should have a tap fixed in one corner of it, by means of which the surplus water should be drained off.

To be able to give free ventilation to the plants every morning is another essential point, as a stagnant atmosphere is as injurious to plants as it is to young children. Over the perforated tray of the case a good layer of broken pottery should be laid, and this should be covered with cocoanut fiber, on which the rock-work should be laid. The space in which it is intended that the ferns are to grow should then be filled in; and nothing is better than peat, rotten turf, and sharp grit sand as a soil for ferns. In the parts of the case intended for the planting of rather strong-growing ferns a larger proportion of rotten turf should be mixed with the peat than in those intended for less robust varieties. The adiantum pedatum (maidenhair), capillus veneris, pteris tessulata, eretica, albo lineata, polypodium vulgare, acrophorus chairophyllus, hispidus anemia adiantifolia, asplenium striatum, bulbiferum, with trichomanes and lelazinellas, are all useful, pretty ferns for these cases. If the fern-case be large, it might be advisable to have an arch reaching from end to end.

But any intelligent gardener will tell more in an hour than we could do in a week on the subject of ferns. Many ladies delight in selecting these lovely aristocrats of the forest themselves. They find no difficulty in arranging a little family of native ferns in an improvised Ward’s case; and this pursuit, as a reason for a woodland ramble and a subsequent fit of industry on the back piazza, is one which has no end as a Home Amusement.

Plant-stands for halls are very favorite decorations nowadays; but, of course, the plants must be hardy, as they will be subject to sudden changes of temperature. One lady made a fine effect by cultivating young pine-trees, spruces, and firs in the large stone jars of her hall. Cocoanut palms or India-rubber plants are the favorite exotics. Hardy ferns group in well for these hall plant-stands. In the bottom of each jar should be placed some broken pottery, for drainage, placed so that the moisture will drain down through the fragments without the soil choking the jar. Over the potsherds a little cocoanut moss should be placed, and then a mixture of leaf-mold, rotten turf and peat, and glass-maker’s sand, to keep the whole porous. On the surface of the pots and between them should be put wood moss, as in the case of stands for sitting-rooms. A common seed-pan, filled with selaginalla denticulata dropped into a small vase, has a fine effect; long sprays grow out over the sides of the vase and drop down eight to ten inches.

In an ordinary apartment, where the window-sills are not wide enough to hold flower-pots, the plan of wire stands is an admirable one for the window gardener. A piece of oil-cloth under the stand catches all the drippings, and a servant-girl with a wiping-towel can clean up all the dÉbris. Soft-wooded plants and those with soft leaves should be arranged as near the window as possible; and if rearranged and turned against the light often, so much the better. Hard-leaved plants, like ivy and the India-rubber plant, may be put anywhere away from the light. But most plants need light before anything. The yucca quadricolor, so much used in the decorative house-jars or vases, becomes beautifully tinted with crimson if it has enough light. Now, if a lady has not room for many rustic jardiniÈres and ornamental flower-stands in her room, she can have zinc-pans and pots, neatly enameled and painted, set on the floor, in which her larger plants may be put out, This is a very good idea for grouping; for she thus produces in her tout ensemble some of the wild confusion and grace of Nature.

A climbing rose should go scattering itself over an imperceptible wire trellis. A geranium should steadily blossom beneath. A group of yucca, agave, dracÆna, Jerusalem cherry, should form a distinct and effective grouping below. And then beautiful trailing plants should drop from hanging baskets, and from every “coigne of vantage.” Ivy grows well in the shade, and may be employed for trailing around sofas, couches, tÊte-À-tÊte chairs, and picture-frames. Ladies sometimes tie a bottle of water behind a picture-frame, and allow the long shoots of nasturtion to grow out as if from the wall. The effect is startling. Mirrors are often cunningly placed behind a flowering plant which is growing in a hanging basket against the wall, thus doubling the effect.

As the days grow shorter, and the winter threatens to come upon us apace, we are always tempted to bring in from the garden the flowers that we think will last. Just before the fatal frosts, roots of mignonette should be planted in pots and put in a dark closet for a few days, where the plant takes root and accommodates itself to its change of base. It will make a room sweet all winter.

A lady can make all sorts of ornamental flower-pot coverings, and herself arrange pretty leather and paper standard covers for the ugly but useful flower-pot of commerce; or she can buy at most country potteries some very artistic flower-pots—also useful. And to put red, green, and blue glass tubes for hyacinths among these gives her window a very pretty effect. The very study of color in these minor matters adds much to her window garden. It is lucky for all lovers of beauty that beauty is now cheap. Art is putting her slender foot down everywhere; and it is almost possible, in a remote country village, to get the delicate classic shapes in cheap pottery which the cultivated Greeks imagined three thousand years ago.

For internal decoration by means of cut flowers, it seems almost absurd to attempt to delineate the proper thing to do; for, if a lady has taste, she will know without being told. But some few hints may not appear impertinent.

For the breakfast-table and dinner-table fresh flowers are almost indispensable. The pretty, cheap, and useful combinations of glass and silver, of china and pottery, which are made to hold flowers, are innumerable. Select a high vase, and fill it every day with fresh grasses, a few daisies, or some graceful ferns combined with white lilies, and you have always a superb center-piece.

For the summer, a large lump of ice covered with flowers, in a silver or glass dish, is delightfully refreshing. It also keeps away the flies. In grand party decorations ice is now freely used, and if some way can be devised to get the refuse water out of the way, it will be always a good thing for a country party or at a grand fÊte at Newport. For great blocks of ice covered with vines and flowers, lighted from behind, have a splendid effect. They cool the air and keep all the flowers fresh. Flowers, when cut, demand coolness; and the effect of the white crystal column is always beautiful.

Some ladies have a large tub put in the corner of the room, and the pyramid of ice placed in that. Then the tub can be masked by moss, branches of trees, evergreen, or any floral device, and the ice is draped with garlands. At a fÊte at Newport, in 1879, this ice decoration was much admired. At a ball given by the Prince of Wales to the Czarina of Russia in the large conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society of South Kensington, ten tons of ice were used to build an ornamental rockery. This was draped with drooping ferns and graceful vines, and was surrounded with crimson baize and lighted from behind.

Nothing is so pretty for the breakfast- or dinner-table as a tall, slender vase which carries the floral decoration high up above the articles of food. Nor is a garden necessary for this species of decoration. Wild flowers, ferns, grasses, and all the beautiful furniture of forest and field, make these vases doubly elegant.

In the rose season—in the sweet days of June—most country gardens overflow with the always regal flower; and this is a table ornament of the highest. The great, broad, low baskets are best for these full, rich queens of color and fragrance. Mass your roses for the middle of the table, and have specimen glasses for some of the more rare varieties. The rose is a cleanly flower, and can be put anywhere near food. But if an unlucky visitor has the rose-cold, then it must be put far away; for the subtile, pungent odor of a rose makes the sufferer sneeze fearfully. There are some families in which roses are thus tabooed.

A basket of roses is the prettiest thing in the world; and the lady going into the country for the summer had better supply herself with a number of these, with handles, from the florist or the basket-maker. If she gets a tin pan also fitted in cunningly, she has the loveliest table ornamentation all ready. Her buffets, her parlor-table, her piano, her brackets can all hold these pleasant things, for which no money need be paid, but which have a value far above money. Never give these baskets a heavy, packed look, but allow plenty of the rich green leaves of the rose to set them off. It seems to us that ladies might create an endless succession of Home Amusements by studying how to vary the effect of their vases and baskets of flowers.

A simple bunch of yellow buttercups in the early spring will make a purple room perfectly beautiful; and dandelions can be massed with great effect. Yellow flowers are rare, but necessary to produce fine contrasts of color. We all tend too much to the red and white easily-obtained effects. They are poor compared with what we can do.

If Fashion has rather run its worship of the daisy into the ground, Fashion might have done a worse thing. We can scarcely blame Fashion for going back to this impressive flower, which in its simplicity has moved all philosophers, poets, and fortune-tellers to admire and study it.

It seems to us that something more cheerful than our usual Christmas decorations could be invented. We make them too somber. Try mixing in the beautiful bitter-sweet berries, which are so very easily obtained, and which keep all winter. The holly is not so common with us as in England; still, many a New England swamp produces a host of hips and haws and red berries.

The business of preserving autumn-leaves shows ten failures to one success. Yet, when autumn leaves are well preserved, they are very charming means of winter decoration. They are luminous at evening, and, mixed with ferns and grasses, are perpetual bouquets. But do not varnish them: that gives them a waxy effect, which is detestable. Press them carefully, and iron them under a piece of brown paper. That seems to preserve the color.

Grasses, on the contrary, and a thousand pods and seed-vessels, grains and cat-tails, and certain weeds, dry into beautiful colors and make most wonderful groups for the parlor mantel. The young ladies of our vast continent can not do a better thing than to each year add to these beautiful and most graceful bouquets, which retain, like the fabled Dryads, all the fascination of Nature, even when they have passed into sticks and dry leaves.