Henry T. Williams - Window Gardening the Old-Fashioned Way: Tried and true methods for turning any window, porch,or balcony into a beautiful garden.

EDITED BY HENRY T. WILLIAMS

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright 2012 by Skyhorse Publishing

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61608-704-3

Printed in the United States of America

Fig. 1. Decorative Bird Cage and Flower Stand.

INDEX.

IT is a great pleasure to write to an audience of flower-lovers-they are so eager, so enthusiastic and so delighted with any hints or suggestions which will help them in their efforts to make home more beautiful.

The taste for Window Gardening, and the plant decoration of apartments, is becoming almost universal; scarcely a cottage or villa but has its attempts, whether simple or elaborate, to decorate the windows, the porch, or the balcony with some few flower pots or climbing vines; it is a sign of healthy sentiment, for the presence of flowers always aids in the development of refinement and an elevated taste.

Desiring to foster this fancy for window ornament, a number of flower-lovers have united with me in the effort to produce a book specially devoted to this subject, aiming to make it simple, practical, and adapted to the use of amateurs and beginners in the cultivation of indoor plants.

Several gardeners and professional writers have contributed articles on special subjects, and we have combined our experience and information in a careful manner, endeavoring to produce a volume as accurate and complete as time and space would permit.

The result is now before the public in this richly illustrated, tasteful volume; and it is hoped that among this goodly number of pages and engravings, every one will feel that their time is well spent by gaining some hints of use and good service.

Acknowledgments of kindly assistance are due to 0. L. Allen, Daisy Eyebright, Thomas Meehan, Kobert Demcker, J. L. Little, Jr.; also to the publishers of some foreign Illustrated Horticultural works, inaccessible to the general reader, whose names are mentioned in the Index.

Should the reader feel pleased with this little testimonial to one of the most beautiful of all departments of flower culture, the author will not regret his effort to add some definite encouragement to the more extensive development of Rural Taste.

THE EDITOR.

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No home of taste is now considered complete without its Window Garden. Indeed it may be said that Window Gardening is one of the most elegant, satisfactory, yet least expensive of all departments of Rural Taste. As a useful means for developing a taste for plant-life and a love for flowers, I count nothing so effective as this simple style of gardening; for who has not noticed that where flowers reign, grace of mind and manner soon follow. One of the advantages of Window Gardening is its simplicity, open to every one and impossible to none. Thousands of persons confined to their homes for the greater part of their life have no greater rural estate than that which the Window Garden affords. To watch the unfolding leaves and budding flowers, the development of branch after branch, is a study of the reality of plant-life, exquisitely interesting to the soul who finds in it its only world of pleasure and sentiment.

It is a form of gardening too, of permanent use and value, The Window Garden is independent to a large degree of the varying seasons, for it can be made attractive every month in the year. The advent of Spring, Summer and Autumn, only render the plants of the Window Garden more luxuriant and make the flowers more brilliant, but they do not die with the first frost or cold wind in winter. When the prospect without is dreary, we can still look to our fern-cases or window-boxes or hanging-baskets and behold in them objects of increased admiration, because they are so charming in their contrast with the desolateness without, and are genial remembrances of greener days gone by.

The universal popularity of Window Gardens, whether large or small, simple or elaborate, is the evidence of a growing taste for flowers and ornamental plants in all circles of society. We have only to notice in all our large cities, towns and villages, how frequent window decorations have become, sometimes seeming as if not a single house was without them in many of our most fashionable avenues. In European cities the citizens indulge even more extensively and passionately in their plant pleasures than we do; every home is decorated from the workingmans window, and its few flower-pots of balsams, to the fernery and tile jardinieres of the aristocratic mansion.

In Brussels, says M. Victor Paquet, the balconies are turned into greenhouses and miniature stoves, gay with the brightest and greenest foliage. And in Paris there are many contrivances in use by means of which the rarest and most beautiful plants are produced. Passifloras cling to columns in the upper floors; water plants start into blossom in tiny basins curiously contrived in solid brickwork, and limpid water flows down a miniature rockery from whose crevices start up ferns and lycopodiums.

The rooms of the Parisian are gay with flowers replaced freshly every day, and in the denser parts of London, black with its smoky atmosphere, may be found some of the choicest of plant-cases. An English writer visiting such a locality once was ushered into a room where the darkness was almost felt, but every window was occupied with a plant-case in which plants were growing in an astonishing manner. Ferns of the greenest and freshest hue, orchids never surpassed, were there in redolent health and vigor. He was told to his great surprise that the cases were hermetically sealed, and that no water had been administered for months.

There is a never-failing charm, too, in the outside decorations of the house or Window Garden. The trellis-work of the balcony may be made ornamental with green foliage and its homeliness tastefully hidden. The ivy will cover the unpainted wall and make it still more artistic. The verandah can be soon covered with the most luxuriant of profuse blooming creepers. Unsightly objects, bare gardens, and plain fences can all be relieved. In fact no home is devoid of the means of tasteful decoration. And so many and easy are the forms of window embellishments at the present day, that we know of no better device for increasing the elegancies and attractions of indoor life.