ART OF GARDENING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1939, Page 9

ART OF GARDENING

ADVICE TO BEGINNERS. Every year there are many beginners in the art of gardening. Becoming possessed of a plot of land, afterwards to be known as. “My Garden,” and no experience, the beginner longs for short cuts and speedy results. . Often there is a hasty survey, the digging up of the land, planting of slips and plants offered by kindly and well-meaning friends, and a sprinkling of the cheapest lawn seed available. How many people have laid out gardens on these lines?

If you desire to achieve the best results, obtain all the available literature in which the methods of experts are described. The first introduction will be somewhat disheartening; there are many unfamiliar terms to digest. Just make up your mind to master the contents. The weeks pass by and just when you are wondering if your perserverance will ever be rewarded, you suddenly realise that you are possessed of a new learning. Previous study, which appeared futile, has formed a strong background of knowledge, founded on facts and not on the time-worn opinions of well-meaning but misguided friends. It is a tragedy that so few realise the limitations of learning are only dependent on the amount of study each individual is willing to make. By all means listen to the advice of your friends, weigh up their opinions and even try them out, but never make the mistake of ignoring technical literature and advice.

As an aid to preserving the knowledge extracted from gardening liter-, ature, a valuable aid is the keeping of a notebook, preferably indexed. The habit of note-taking is valuable, especially when some precious little hint, gleaned from long previous reading, is not committed to an overloaded memory, but to its proper page. Each line in your notebook is worthy of the entry and the list is always growin. A set of index cards, ranging from the planning of gardens to points on exhibiting, enables quick reference. The novice gardener will be sensible enough to realise that the secret of good gardening is not in digging alone, or in reading, or listening to someone talk on the subject, but in an intelligent application of what has been learned by personal study. Therein lies the secret of good gardening.