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PLANNING AND PLANTING YOUR OWN PLACE by Louis B. Van de Boe

PLANNING AND PLANTING YOUR OWN PLACE

By

Publisher: Macmillan

This book attempts a large order and on the whole the author has done a successful job. To go from the first preconceived idea through to the actual establishment of a practical and blooming garden is an accomplishment of which anyone might be proud. It is also a road fraught with hardship, problems, pitfalls and unnecessary disappointments unless the novice has an experienced gardener at his beck and call. Even then he is apt to get more from a well planned book that forewarns rather than bails him out of trouble. There are dozens of little suggestions that make this prescience invaluable, e.g. to find out from the people who live there, the drawbacks to a certain neighborhood such as smoke, noise or mosquitoes, rather than expect the agent, trying to sell you a lot, to say the railroad over there is smoky, the fire engine house and school do make this a noisy spot, or that swamp is liable to make your land damp and call mosquitoes. In the situation of the house on the lot there are suggestions for the greatest symmetry yet the highest percentage of privacy, living and garden space. The same is true of roads, building beds and planting. Five dollars invested in this kind of foresight is money well spent for it can save from $5.00 to $50.00 or more, if a bad mistake is made in the initial stages. After the lot, the house, the roads and planting have been done, the garden is planned and planted with excellent suggestions for satisfactory annuals, perennials, roses and rock plants. There's even a chapter on tools!