The Feeling For Plants

     One does not make a good library till one has a feeling for books, nor a good collection of pictures without a feeling for pictorial art. Neither does one make a good garden of any kind without a feeling for plants. This does not mean that the feeling must be born with the person. It would be a hopeless world if we could not acquire new sentiments and enthusiasms. One can cultivate a feeling for plants by carefully observing them, growing them, reading about them, and particularly by choosing the company of persons who know and love them. As soon as one begins to distinguish the different kinds closely, one acquires the feeling of acquaintanceship; every kind then has its own qualities, and every kind is admirable in itself. Plants have personality.

    The interest in plants is primarily, I suppose, in their forms. They are endlessly diverse. Vine, herb, tree, shrub, aquatic, they inhabit the earth and clothe it, and give significance to scenery. The greenery of vegetation is the mantle and the garnish of the planet. Leaf-forms, flower-forms, fragrances, shapes and colors and odors in fruits, twig-habit and bark and buds are all perfect of their kind. To admire a plant is to be keen in observation, appreciative of nature, responsive in sympathy and suggestion.
    The plant-grower has a special intimacy with his plants. They respond to his care; they come up slowly from the seed or the cutting; they take on new forms and adapt themselves to the conditions he provides. Often will one see a gardener run his fingers over the stem or branches and pass his hand over the foliage as if caressing the plant.
     The lover of plants enjoys them in their surroundings, in the places where they grow. When they seem to fit the place, or become a part of the general composition, they have the added beauty of association, one plant complementing another. The growth-form of one differs from the form of another; the color and fashion of bark are different; the foliage effects are distinct; yet they may not be inharmonious.
    The plant-lover responds to the plants as they grow in the wild. The bush by the roadside interests him; he looks for it as he comes and goes. The fence-row has its charm, even though he must cut it out to make room for crops. The herbs and the trees, the plant-forms in the marsh, all awaken a pleasurable response. He wants to transfer them to his grounds. It is well to have a nursery plot at one side, out of sight and out of the way, to which all kinds of things from the wild may be transferred. As they grow, some of them may be wanted for the grounds, and in any case, there is the pleasure of anticipation, of experiment.
    Much of the interest in plants is conditioned on the seasonal changes. In this are they unlike animals, and hereby do they have a special charm. The swelling of the buds in spring marks an epoch: the birds come back; the creeks are overflowing; a new odor rises from the earth; the sky is soft; the men and teams take to the fields. Then the buds burst, the leaves unfold and grow, the branches lengthen, the foliage is complete, the flowers come and fade, fruit appears; then comes the yellowing of the leaf, the dropping one by one as the autumn moves on, and finally the bare twigs go well prepared and secure into the great test of winter. Next year, will the miracle be repeated? We know it will!
    After a time one expresses one's knowledge and skill in the raising of plants. The kinds come to be familiar. The books and catalogues have a new meaning. Acquisitions are prized. Experiment is fascinating. One is proud of one's workmanship. Then does the growing of plants become a real enthusiasm.
    No modern home that has a yard is meeting its best opportunities unless it exhibits a discriminating feeling for plants. One owes it to oneself to cultivate an appreciation of plants, of gardens, and of landscapes. One owes it to one's family and to the children. -L.H. Bailey, Home Grounds: Their Planning and Planting

L.H. Bailey on the Oak Tree

OAK: Strength, solidity, durability are symbolized in the Oak. The tree is connected with the traditions of the race, and it is associated with literature. It is a tree of strong individuality, with bold, free growth and massive framework. Its longevity appeals to every person, even though he has no feeling for trees. It connects the present with the past. It spans the centuries.
    This feeling that the Oak represents a long span of years is itself the reason why we should consider the tree with veneration and let it live its full time; and this is the particular lesson which the writer would impress. Spare the isolated Oak trees! Of whatever kind or species, a mature Oak is beyond price. To allow it to remain bespeaks culture and kindly feeling.
-L.H. Bailey, Cyclopedia of American Horticulture

Winter Wildlife Gardening

Ernie Allison loves nature. More specifically, he loves birds and wants to teach others how to appreciate them, too. To help further this mission, he writes for the bird feeder accessories provider, birdfeeders.com.

It is pretty well-known that gardening can be great for your health. It offers stress relief, exercise, improves mental health, and provides you with fresh food to eat and beautiful plants to look at. It is also good for the environment. By making specific choices, you can provide native plants that are great for the local wildlife to thrive off of, especially in the winter.

Many people assume that you need to cut down all your plants and kill your garden before winter does. This is a lot of unnecessary work. By leaving your garden as is, you allow nature to take its course, which gives shelter and food sources for native animals. Here are some benefits of leaving your garden be for the winter.

·         Snow is known to bend large plants. This of course eliminates perches for birds, but creates pathways for them as well as other creatures to utilize.

·         Piles of leaves provide a warm shelter for small animals.

·         Cutting the tops off plants can actually cause them to die completely due to the cold.

·         Worms and other bugs may take shelter also, which will attract birds for your viewing pleasure, especially in the spring when everyone warms up and comes out to feed.

·         By skipping the needless landscaping, you save yourself a lot of stress, which is what gardening is all about! Why clean up your garden in the fall and the spring, when you can get away with doing it once, and have better results!

·         You can use your extra time to watch the wildlife and plan your garden strategy for the spring

Here are some extras you can do in order to provide for the winter wildlife in your area. After all, not everyone sleeps all winter, and freezing temperatures can make food difficult to find.

·         Choose seed and berry producing plants that can stand up to the winter cold. Some options are:

o        Bayberry

o        Dogwood

o        Virginia Creeper

o        See what’s native to your area 

·         If you choose to supplement with a bird feeder, be sure to get your seed from a source that is guaranteed not to use pesticides or other harmful ingredients.

·         Minimize the mullet, and remember that bread is bad for birds. Stick with nuts, seeds, and other unprocessed foods. For more information on what food to choose, check out this resource page about feeding birds.

By using your gardening habit to benefit the wildlife around you, you are spreading the health benefits that gardening brings to you. That should help you sleep easier at night, on top of everything else.

Vegetable-Gardening Tools

     There is a tool for every labor. Many of these tools are the products of necessity. Others satisfy the inventive fancy of the American. Foreign writers wonder at the variety of tools pictured in our rural books, but the number of tools which are in actual use far exceeds those which are described in books. To an important degree it is true that the successful American farmer is known by the number and variety of his tools. The man who has many useful implements emphasizes brain above brawn. He is tactful and resourceful. He means to be master of the situation. He is to accomplish the given result with the least expenditure of mere physical energy. He will do his work better and more expeditiously than the man who depends on his hands and his muscles. Good tools educate the man. Their use cultivates ingenuity. They teach him to think.

     On the other hand, the man who is rich in agricultural implements has less intimate contact with his plants than the hand-worker has. The machine is between him and the plant. He depreciates the value of painstaking human care in the growing and the training of the plant.

     In selecting a tool, the buyer should know (a) what labor is to be performed, (b) what implement will best perform it. Many farmers buy a tool because it is perfect as a mechanism or merely because it is an improvement on what they already have. This is well; but it should be borne in mind, after all, that the tool is not the first consideration,—it is not the unit. The unit is the work to be done or the condition to be attained. A farmer may not ask, therefore, whether he shall buy a spading-harrow: he should consider his soil and what he wants to do with it, and then search for the tool which will do the work best. -L.H. Bailey, The Principles of Vegetable Gardening

L.H. Bailey appears in, The Native Landscape Reader

    When it comes to school allegiances, the green colored gridiron may always cast The University of Michigan and Michigan State University as the eternal warring opposites. When it comes to the cultivated patch of green, acrimony is passe as witnessed in U of M's Robert E. Grese's inclusion of MSU alum, Liberty Hyde Bailey in his volume, The Native Landscape Reader (Critical Perspectives in the History of Environmental Design) .
     Robert E. Grese, professor of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan, describes Bailey as, "one of the seminal figures in American Horticulture, plant science, landscape gardening, and conservation in the twentieth century." This volume features selections from Bailey's, The Outlook to Nature along with Grese's trove of luminaries culled from his research including Frederick Law Olmsted, Jens Jensen, Andrew Jackson Downing, Horace William Shaler Cleveland, and O.C. Simonds.
    This gives us a good excuse to revisit a selection from Bailey's gem of a book. As Bailey explained, "The outlook  to nature is the outlook to optimism, for nature is our governing condition." Enjoy!_______________

The out-of-doors.

By nature, I mean the natural out-of-doors, — the snow and the rain, the sky, the plants, the animals, the garden and the orchard, the running brooks, and every landscape that is easy of access and undefiled.

     Every person desires these things in greater or lesser degree: this is indicated by the rapidly spreading suburban movement, by the vacationing in the country, and by the astonishing multiplication of books about nature. Yet there are comparatively very few persons who have any intimate contact with nature, or any concrete enjoyment from it, because they lack the information that enables them to understand the objects and phenomena.

Winter

Here is a little mediation from L.H. Bailey on the liberating aspects of winter from his collection of poetry, Wind and Weather:

Winter

Snow to my knees, shivering blasts

Piercing slivers of ice and sleet

Creaking trees all rigid and gaunt

Clouds that drive in the wind-wild vasts

Houses clean gone from field and street

Footways buried to stall and haunt,—

Ah winter, old winter, so braggartly hurled,

Unfrightened we stand on the top of your world,

Unprisoned and free as the birds that are whirled

When blizzards are loosed and the tempests are sent— .

Unhurried we wait till your furies are spent.

Wide is the world of the drifting snow
Wide over the waste the white rifts go
Travelling on with a ceaseless flow
Out to the voids we never shall know.

Frog insect and snake lie fast lie tight
Hidden and snug in pocketed deeps,
But we are alive come green come white
The year is ours while the 'neath-world sleeps,—
Ours with rabbit's track and mouse's trail
With grasses frayed and rough trees snow-limbed
Fence-drift's clean curl and the seed-pod's sail
Stumps white-turbanned and deep creeks ice-rimmed.

Crunch and crunch through the white snapping crust
With frigid bush and summer's dead stalk
Where earth lies deep and ice-piles are thrust,
The trackless ways are the ways we walk,—

Walk out and out with the swirling snow
On to the realms of bluster and blow
Where ghosts of the years of long ago
Shriek thro' the hills to caverns below.

Stript to the bone is the wind-worn year
Cover and mask and ornament gone—
Clear as days to the sight of the seer
We understand when the veil is withdrawn.

Come on, ye storms! Together we reach
Past and outpast the timid alarms—
This is our day; and over the breach
We go the way of the warmthless farms.

There Are No Parties In Science

As we enter a presidential election cycle, a common theme reemerging is the growing partisanship in the country. L.H. Bailey, in Ground-Levels in Democracy (1916) offers another view in regarding politics and the polarizing need to have one's opinion rule over substance and fact.   

   For a public officer we want a person who thinks as we do: this is what political parties mean. If we were scientific, we would want an officer because he were best qualified. Our method of government rests on this partisanship,—on my side and your side, the pros and cons, the ins and outs, the saints and sinners, the democrats and republicans. It is said that in the nature of things and in the quality of the human mind, the life of the race must be partisan. We are told that there is good and evil, a proposition, however, not capable of proof; that there is day and night, but the day and the night both are continuous and they merely pass over us where we stand; that there is up and down, but not one of us knows at this moment whether he is on his head or on his feet. The processes of nature are all continuous and we interpret the contrasts as if they were essential differences in substance.

     There are no parties in science. There may be difference of opinion when we do not yet know the truth, and variations in interpretation, and personal antagonisms between those whose science does not reach to the heart; but government at present is organized partisanship. A merchant is not partisan in his shop, nor a manufacturer in his factory, nor a farmer on his farm, nor a teacher in his class-room; but at the polls these persons think they are not citizens unless they have opinions which are correct because they hold them. This long-continued practice solidifies opinion and makes it impregnable to evidence; we come at length to substitute habit for reason.