The Joy of Gardening
Love to garden? We do too! We also love to read old gardening books and collecting antique gardening tools. When we're not out back weeding, chasing pests or propagating plants, you'll find us in the den with our prized collection of 100 year old gardening books, poring over quaint drawings of garden plans and planting lists. This blog will excerpt passages from those wonderful gardening resources as well as keep you up to date with our backyard adventures. Gardening tips and tricks from over 100 years ago, who would have thought?

Archive for April, 2006

The idea of keeping ivy indoors has never occured to me. In fact, I never ever think of planting ivy at all. I have so much ivy on my property that I have to beat it back each summer.  Maybe I should consider keeping it indoors. Take a look at the health benefits of keeping ivy indoors:

CHAPTER XV.

HARDY CLIMBING VINES. — IVIES.

Hardy Climbing Vines seem to be in large demand in different sections of the country, either for training upon trellises as single specimens, or for training upon the side of the building, piazza, portico, or to screen unsightly places, etc. We select from a large number of hardy climbing vines the following sorts, which we think are the most desirable:

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Quick, name a houseplant that you don’t have to water much. Right! The Cactus. My son loves cactuses. He kept one for years and we weren’t sure if it was alive or not. Then all of a sudden it just started blooming! Incredible.

CHAPTER XXV.

CACTUSES

For singularity and grotesqueness of form, as well as for the exceptional conditions under which they grow to the best advantage, no class of plants is more remarkable than the Cactaceæ. Of these, about a thousand species have been described by botanists; nearly all are indigenous to the New World, though but a small proportion are in cultivation. Cactuses delight in a dry, barren, sandy soil.

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