May 1937

ACROSS THE Editor's DESK

The Picture on the Cover: Will they fade? Not in our memories. These cups of dancing color will still be ours-- come bulb-planting time next fall, or blooming time in other springs. Our garden diary will be dated from the day and the hour these blossoms reached their fullest beauty.

It's News to me!

PLANNING to remodel our home, Nick and I pondered whether we could get along without an architect. His fee, we knew, would be about 10 percent of the remodeling cost-- and could we avoid it? We finally asked Joe, a family friend who is a general contractor, to figure the job. He submitted a bid!

Shrub Roses Step Into the Flower Border

BUSH roses add a delightful element to the flower garden. Used singly or in small clumps, they can be planted here and there thru your flower borders as incidental ornament, accompanying and supplementing the bloom of other flowers, or they can be placed in important positions as accents to emphasize the garden's design.

A KING Retires to his Garden

NOT only in the annals of royal lineage and politics but in the whole history of gardening, the story of David Windsor, for a brief time Edward VIII, is truly the most touching and appealing mankind has witnessed.

TURN TO POOLS

LILY POOLS are to me the most fascinating of all garden features, combining as they do the charm of reflecting surface and goldfish movement with the exotic fragrance and glamorous beauty of waterlilies. They appeal to me as a busy person because they need no weeding and no summer care except occasional addition of a few pailfuls of water to replace that which has evaporated.

SO WE BUILT WALL GARDENS

EVER stop to think how many problems a rock wall garden can solve? We didn't in the beginning, but we learned as we went along. We had a steep lawn slope in hardpan soil, a grand glissade for the lawnmower-- going down! Johnny rebelled on the up-pull, and the grass rebelled on general principles. We built a wall because there was a good deal of rock on our lot. It wasn't fine ledge rock, but it made a good wall, and we planted it heavily enough so that the stones showed only here and there.

WE ROOT FOR DAHLIAS

DAHLIAS are so heart-warming in their gorgeous colorings, so refreshing in their crisp green foliage, and so thrilling in their vital aliveness in the autumn that no garden should be without them.

Gracîous Lîttle Gardens

THE well-kept little garden has a cozy charm all its own and condenses and intensifies the pleasures that might be spread over a large estate.

THE CAPE COD COTTAGE GARDEN

PERHAPS the most characteristic garden type America has given us is that found on Cape Cod today. The Cape Cod cottage garden isn't elaborate. This is evident as you tour "The Cape," which boasts some of the most beautiful examples. This miniature type garden is, undoubtedly, more akin to the English cottage garden than to any other and is a direct descendant of pioneer gardens.

Article

FROM COAST TO COAST

AGAIN this month Better Homes & Gardens selects for you a group of six more interesting new homes built within the last year or two. They were culled from many others for their wide variety in room-plan arrangement and their fine use of good building materials.

HOW Dry I AM

VIVIDLY do we remember the cellars of our grandfathers' houses. They were always cold and damp and forbidding, and we stayed out of them as much as we could. Dampproofing in those days was not a major problem, and beyond a few elemental precautions, nothing was done, because cellars were only for storage.

At Home July First

THE chances are, tho, that your excited new husband will have misplaced the latch key, leaving two of you to crawl in the kitchen window, but the big, shining fact will be that the honeymoon is over and the glorious adventure has begun.

A Small Home

THIS Better Homes & Gardens Bildcost Gardened Home of Richard H. Ralston, Weston, West Virginia, designed by Ethel M. Crosby, was freshly sodded when this photograph was taken by Photographer A. L. Ellis. "I can only say that I'm delighted with your plans," says Mr. Ralston.

Another Small Home

THIS Better Homes & Gardens Bildcost Gardened Home of Mr. and Mrs. John E. Baker, Leavenworth, Kansas, was designed by Bildcost Architect Willard B. Smith and photographed by H. S. Stevenson.

SMALL--BUT WITH NO SMALL-HOME FAULTS

UNDOUBTEDLY the home which fits the needs and desires of the largest number of families in the United States is the five-room, one-floor plan house that costs about $5,000.

Modern Economy

THERE'S a tribal spirit in the bosom of every family that yearns for a spot where neatness can on occasion be tossed to the winds, where protracted games can be waged without interruption, where trophies and sport truck, treasured books and old magazines, can hibernate without upsetting some cherished decorating scheme.

THE Question BEFORE THE HOUSE

IS ROTTING of wood a continuous process or can it be stopped? Will a chemical treatment stop it?

AIDS TO Lazy GARDENING

A YEAR ago when I asked my friend Sydney B. Mitchell, one of the outstanding gardeners of the Pacific Coast, what to do about mealy bugs which had begun to keep company with my dahlia roots, he merely said, "Hold the roots under the faucet and wash off the bugs.

Kitchen Transformation

"RUB-DUST" YOUR FURNITURE

HERE is a chest, a descendant of one of the proudest Mahogany families of Honduras, beautifully designed, built with skill, superbly finished, and ready to serve tor generations.

Better Homes AMONG OURSELVES

LINENS for the New Home, the Old Home

WEATHER reports to the contrary, we predict showers in May-- just as sure as there'll be brides in June. But sunny and gay these showers will be, and happy the bride who's deluged with linens. After gift lists have been filled, we further predict, you'll want to restock your own linen supply.

Me, Sandy!

INTRODUCTION: The house had grown still, and already the ship's clock on the mantel had tolled off the hour of midnight. We were alone, my dog and I. He lay, as he had lain all evening, on the old tiger rug before the hearth, his shaggy whiskers all but concealing his stumpy forepaws. From the ink-well depths of his eyes, a gleam stared up at me.

AN OLD HOUSE IS REBORN

SOME old houses attract instead of repel the passer-by. In spite of worn sills, sagging doors, and weather-beaten siding, a suggestion of former beauty lingers about the aged frame.

Design in the Small Home

DID YOU ever pick up a magazine with an enchanting view of somebody-or-other's beautiful home situated on Long Island or in Hollywood, glance enviously over the floor plans, noting the amplitude of closets, the ducky lantern over the front door, the glorious privacy of the second-floor bedrooms, and sigh regretfully as you turn back to your own contemplated five- or six-room bungalow, wishing vaguely that there were some way to incorporate all the features of the larger home in your own specifications?

What Every Club President Knows!

"THERE'S such a difference between being merely a member and being club president, isn't there?" remarked Mary when I met her this morning in the library.

An Icebox for Two

AS any camper knows, there come days in summer when a bunk under shelter has its merits. A dressing room and a chest of drawers in a damp-free nook under a roof at such times seem positive luxuries. Most of the time, there's all the out-of-doors for living, dining, and enjoying the sun on one's back.

FOR Boys Only

WHEN we built our home we had a long argument with the architect over a basement playroom for our son. We were anxious to reduce the cost of building and were trying to discover which part of our plan could be eliminated.

YOUNG IDEAS

Flowers Under the Arctic Circle

CURTAINING YOUR DINING ROOM

No room in the house reflects the personality of its occupants quite so completely as the dining room, be it in a mansion or a cottage. Here, the guest becomes "family," partaking of those homey joys of true hospitality, while host and hostess display their genial graciousness.

We Bury Our Troubles

THE question was how to go on a vacation between the spring and summer-school term and still have the garden full of summer flowers. We had to find a way to take care of the flats [seed boxes] of seeds already planted and the house plants.

UPROOT YOUR Garden Gate-Crashers

HAVE you looked under your hedges and flowering shrubs recently? If such relatively remote spots haven't been cultivated of late, you'll probably find flourishing colonies of tree seedlings bristling there-- sturdy little shoots that have germinated from migrant seeds of near-by maples, locusts, horse-chestnuts, oaks, or other species.

A Once-Tough Town Grows a Remarkable Rose

TOMBSTONE, Arizona, has made many claims in its day. Once it was known as the country's toughest town --when grizzly miners' trigger fingers were quick and lives were cheap. All this tradition was recently shattered, however, when the citizens staged a poetry contest and announced the winners at a tea given by the ladies' aid society.

NOW WE HAVE A NEW BATHROOM

WE HAD one of those old-fashioned bathrooms --hard to keep clean, space-wasting, and with fixtures that definitely dated the house as being at least 15 years old.

Finishing Touches FOR YOUR WALLS

Perennial Harmonizers

Article

"OURS WOULD BE A CABIN HOME"

IT STARTED this way: I (Billy) was assigned the job of writing a poem, by a Creative-Writing prof who believed that poetry is the alpha and omega of literary expression.

Strange Wanderers OF OUR GREAT SOUTHWEST

SOUTHWESTERN trails may fill you with ecstasy because of their beauty and color. Or they may send shivery thrills into your heart when you look at the wild, fantastic deserts of immeasurable expanse.

Trespassers Welcome!

ONCE a very poor family came into sudden wealth. Their home for years had been one of the meanest, possessing no charm whatever, from the cluttered basement to the cobwebbed attic. With their freshly acquired wealth this family bought a new home and filled it with furnishings bright and unworn from the store. Then, taking a taxi and carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs, they moved.

Bellflowers YOU SHOULD KNOW

IT'S MY private opinion that most of us have long neglected the extremely interesting and beautiful Bellflowers. Perhaps this family of some three hundred species tires mentally those who would pick out a representative collection, but it would be well worth the effort to delve into a good catalog to extract as many as you want; that number will probably be more than you can afford.

Article

THE MAN NEXT DOOR

A wife can forgive her husband's stenographer a great deal if she never fails to remind him of his wedding anniversary; and if she jogs his memory about valentines, Mother's Day, and occasional flowers and candy, they can be real pals!

THE Diary OF A PLAIN DIRT GARDENER

This morning I snuck out in overalls before time for the regular day's work and went over the entire old rose bed, picking up every smidgeon or old stems and even old leaves from last fall. This is to control the black-spot disease by sanitation, for on these old fragments are living the fungi that will start off the disease to pester me later on.

Wandering Lily

ALONG THE GARDEN PATH

THERE'S a magic place in my garden where anything and everything thrives. Forking it over recently, I recalled its origin.