This species is native to northern Japan, and its vernacular ‘name Kobushi was used as a source for the scientific name, Magnolia kobus, as well as for the common name we use. The plant was introduced to this country in 1865, when Thomas Hogg, President Lincoln’s representative in Japan, sent seeds home to New York and the progeny was distributed principally by the Parsons nursery at Flushing. Kobus is quite similar to the star magnolia, M. stellata, which was being featured as a novelty at the same time and by the same nursery. The star magnolia, however, is native to the southern portions of the Japanese islands, and in general it is more shrublike in habit.

Flower differences between the two are quite pronounced. Kobus has six to nine obovate petals of traditional magnolia form, while M. stellata has 14 to 20 narrowly oblong or strap-shaped segments which open rather flat into a less formal bloom. Star magnolia is notable for setting buds freely even when quite small, and it must be admitted that Kobus does not have this beguiling habit.

It is a much more rapid grower, however, and soon surpasses the 6- or 7-foot size when flowers are usually produced. It is of particular interest that the hybrid between these two Japanese species, M. loebneri, seems to combine the best traits of both parents. It promises to make a small tree of the more graceful habit of Kobus, and its flowers have ten to twelve, or more, large obovate petals and are larger than those of either parent.

The leaves of Kobus magnolia typically measure from 3 to 5 inches long, but a variety from northern Japan has larger leaves and much sturdier growth. This is variety borealis, Hokkaido magnolia, which was introduced in 1892 by Professor Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum at Boston. Vigorous plants of Hokkaido magnolia frequently grow 3 to 4 feet in one year, and it is not surprising that in its native forests it makes massive, columnar trees 80 feet high. Unfortunately, this variety does not bloom until well grown, and it also takes too much room for inclusion in many gardens.

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Some flower as early as March, but the peak of bloom is in April and May. One cool year my bushes (mostly grown from seed) began to blossom late in January and wound up with scattered flowers in August. At that time most of them were heavy with black seed pods.

Take a look at Dorothy Walpole. a May-blooming broom which is quite distinctive with its 3- to 7-inch spikes of dainty red and purple flowers. Geofiry Skipwith, one of the earliest to bloom, has a creamy pink banner and keel and dark crimson wings. Pomona, orange and apricot, is a powerful grower and should be placed at a distance from other plants or it will crowd out weaker neighbors. St. Mary, which is lower than the average broom, is delightful when covered with white bloom. McGill is a redand-white dwarf.

Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys

The lily-turfs, Liriope muscari and its varieties and Mondo (Ophiopogon) jaburan, are adapted to the Big Valley garden in shade and borders where the sun is not too strong. The roots spread by means of stolons, often becoming sod; the evergreen foliage resembles coarse grass and is sometimes variegated.

The small, drooping flowers, carried in quantity close to the stem, may be violet-blue, lilac or white. You can find these plants in at least one California nursery. Liriope muscari and L spicata are only about 8 inches high; L. grandiflora and Mondo jaburan are much taller.

Pacific Northwest

You can improve the quality of next year’s flowering bulbs by applying fertilizer now. Old manure is a good mulch; phosphates and potash are particularly needed to help bulbs store up food while they are in active growth.

In making up your list of summer bulbs, don’t forget two that are so tender that they must he taken up in the fall: ismene (Hymeno. callis calathina), from tropical America. and Mexican tuberose (Polianthese tuberosa), which is called a tuberose because of its tubers, not because it looks like a rose. Ismene bears large spicily fragrant flowers which resemble cream-colored daffodils. It should be planted between the middle of May and the middle of July. See that the bulb is planted 6 inches deep in rich soil in a sunny location and do not let it dry out. As for the Mexican tuberose, you can hurry the bloom along by potting up the bulbs late this month and keeping them in the house until they can be set out in May. The fragrant white flowers, which may be single or double, are carried on tall stems.

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Late fall planting also has something in its favor. For several years I have compared late fall (October 20 to November 10) planting with spring planting, and in most cases the fall-planted beds have outyielded the spring-set beds. Plants set out in the fall get off to an earlier start and produce more early runners that bear the heavier crop a year later.

Fall-set plants must be mulched the first winter. In the spring the mulch is raked off and the planting managed the same as one set in the spring. The blossoms should be picked off and the bed allowed to fruit the following spring.

There are many good varieties of strawberries. Generally speaking, the high-quality sorts do not produce the highest yields, but they do produce enough to be satisfactory for the home garden. Dessert quality and reliability are most important in a home garden variety.

Strawberry plants should be purchased from a specialist, preferably one nearby. Although plants shipped early from growers usually arrive safely, plants ordered late and shipped long distances during a hot spell may overheat, with disastrous results.

If the plants arrive before the ground is ready for planting, the bundle should be opened and the plants heeled-in in a moist, shady place in the garden. Each bundle of plants should be opened and the roots spread out so they are in contact with the soil.

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What your neighbors think of your lawn is what your prospective buyer will think of it. When selling a house you must think like a buyer – think like a retailer where everything is neat, tidy and in good working order. Let your house deteriorate a five thousand dollars worth and you’ll find yourself lowering your sale price by 2 to 3 times that much. (If on the other hand you keep the house right up to snuff with all the latest improvements and decorations, you can get much more than even the appraiser will give for it!)

One often overlooked factor, in spite of the limitations above on insurance buying, is the need for ENOUGH INSURANCE to cover the newly inflated value of your property. Don’t think for a moment that your home cannot be destroyed by an accident or natural disaster – I went through Hurricane Andrew! It certainly can. Multiplicity of high-voltage electric appliances in the modern home increases the danger of high-temperature fire. Increasing use of natural gas as heating fuel provides further hazard. Combination’s of perils occur without realization.

Other new hazards: constant presence of military and commercial planes overhead, nearby military installations, high-voltage TV sets, lighting strikes, new hurricane patterns, new flood areas, tornadoes and a variety of other unexpected events.

Yes, it is entirely possible for you to lose your home and all its furnishings – and insurance to the extent of its total market value is certainly a wise precaution.Remember insurance transfers the financial risk to another party. If you have kept a constant amount of insurance through the years it is likely to be far below the indicated amount today. If the value of the house itself has increased it is also likely that other increases have occurred.

For example, have you done some remodeling through the years? Added a room? You say you added that to the insurance when you did the building? In what amount? Did you add what the room cost you at the time? But it might cost twice as much to replace today! Have you replaced the furnishings in the house? Added to their total value? At today’s prices? (Try a little shopping for the fun of it. Go out and try to buy that living room couch. Will you be surprised!) If you have done nothing about your home insurance in ten years or more, you are really dreadfully under-insured and should do something about it right away.

Review the insurance coverage on your home today, look for ways to improve the coverage and reduce your monthly cost. Always took to have the full replacement cost of the property insured, so when the value goes up – you will be covered.

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There are many ways the hobby of gardening can be an absorbing enterprise the entire year, and one of them is by allowing the seed and nursery catalogs to carry you through strange and exciting adventures during the winter.

There is an idea abroad among matter-of-fact gardeners that a seed or nursery catalog is merely sales literature for ordering plant materials. Their catalogs are discarded after their needs are ordered so as not to clutter up the house. They miss the pleasure and instruction which can be theirs from the correct use of catalogs.

To make clear what one gardener thinks is correct use, let me recount a few of the exciting adventures that have come my way during the years in which I have let seed and nursery catalogs be a part of my year-round living, but please overlook the perpendicular pronoun if it becomes too prominent!

Let us assume that this winter evening a raging blizzard prevents you from going out. A new seed catalog has arrived in the day’s mail. Your evening is not lost, because your catalog will provide you entertainment if you will approach it in the right manner. As you sit down in your snowbound living room, let us suppose that your catalog falls open to the muskmelon section and that your attention is directed to one of the new hybrids.

Its description is so enticing you wonder what gardeners did before the days of hybrids. Then begins a delightful journey into the past, and if I happened to be the snowbound gardener, the journey would go something like this: I would reach for my file of old catalogs to be reminded of some of ths; good old varieties perhaps no longer available. I could no doubt recall the first time I tasted the superb quality. Then my glance might fall on an old Maurice Fuld catalog, and fancy would surely run rampant, finally coming to rest, no doubt, on a Japanese variety-perhaps, with “the sweetness of `honey dew’ and the delightful flavor of a high quality pear.”

From here, I might travel the uncertain road followed by De Candolle throughout the world in his search for the muskmelon’s origin. I would see Africans on the banks of the Niger gathering and eating little wild plum-sized melons which Thonning named Cucumis arenarius; and inhabitants of Northern India eating the wild form, which Roxburgh called C. turbinatus. A variable plant with fruit from the size of a plum to that of a lemon, its flesh may be sweet, insipid (such as some of the modern kinds we grew the past sunless summer) or slightly acid.

My mental wanderings would next take me to the hills of Persia, now Iran, where in modern times the world’s best melons are grown. Then, if I had more time and did not get too sleepy, I could follow the muskmelon from its introduction into Europe, perhaps about the beginning of the Christian era, to the present, savoring many of my own cultures during the years that I have grown muskmelons. Eventually I would return to the new hybrid described in my new catalog.

As you can see the world of the landscape and garden does not only happen in the greenhouse or outside in the dirt.

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Of the popular scented-leaved geraniums, the lemon-scented and the rose-scented varieties root easily and quickly under common propagating methods.

The lemon-scented (Pelargonium crispum) is a small stemmed plant, with tiny crinkled leaves, which requires considerably more water than most geraniums. Take cuttings about 3-3/4 inches long and trim off all leaves from the bottom up to 1-1/4 inches. Make a clean cut beneath an eye, dip the end into 3X rooting powder and insert the cuttings in clean sand, deep enough so that the lower leaves do not touch the sand. Shade until signs of growth are evident. Then remove shade and keep plants a little drier.

Oak-leaved varieties (Pelargonium quercifolium) are not too difficult. Take tender cuttings, but if they are hardened, root them under drier conditions. A 1X rooting powder is best. Practically all hardy and easy-to-root as well are the flowering scented varieties, none of which demand anything beyond normal cultural conditions. Here again water well, and allow the sand to become rather dry, but not arid, before watering again.

Spice-scented and fruit-scented varieties vary considerably in their needs, but here is how some of the more familiar kinds should be handled.

Use Rooting Powder

Cuttings from the nutmeg geranium (Pelargonium fragrans) and its varieties are made from the heaviest wood available and dipped in a No. 1 or No. 2 rooting powder. These are dependable rooters, but it is best to leave them in the sand for three or four months until the tuberous-type roots have formed.

Apple-scented geraniums (Pelargonium odoratissimum) are propagated from the very short joints which radiate from the main stem and then potted directly into 2-1/2″ pots filled with good soil. They will invariably lose all their leaves, but will fill out with new growth. So it is a must to know why there are brown tips on plants.

Ginger-scented, lemon-balm and almond-scented are all very easy to root under ordinary conditions.

Gooseberry-leaved geranium (Pelargonium grossularioides) is another very small-wooded variety which should he well shaded and given a little more than the usual amount of water, especially after the first week or two in sand.

Mint-scented varieties (Pelargonium tomentosam) including Peppermint, Pungent Peppermint and Joy Lucile require only the usual practices given cuttings.

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All vines in general, and evergreens in particular, need plentiful moisture in the soil until it freezes. This is your best insurance against late winter and early spring “burning,” in which warmth and sunlight draw moisture from the leaves before the soil is thawed and the roots are ready to send up moisture from below.

For extra protection, mulch the soil over the vine’s roots with several inches of buckwheat or cottonseed hulls, salt hay or straw, ground corncobs or sugar cane, or similar material. Snow is an excellent mulch, while it lasts.

Or make an eight-inch mound of soil over the roots and around the base of the stems, and wrap the rest of the stems in burlap. In extreme climates, loosen the roots on one side of a deciduous vine, lay its trunk or stems down in a trench dug out from the other side, and cover the whole with soil until early spring.

Don’t plant vines and kentia palm in open areas where gusty winter winds can whip them loose from their supports. After a sticky snowstorm. gently push or shake off heavy drifts caught by upper branches. Or provide a windbreak of trees or shrubs, or a screen of burlap or evergreen boughs.

In any climate, keep in mind that plants can stand a gradual drop in temperature more readily than a sudden frost or freeze, particularly if it occurs very early or very late in the dormant season. When unseasonal cold threatens, the simple expedient of covering the top of a vine with a tent of newspaper or plastic overnight may often save its life.

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Sunlight

Daylight is necessary to all plants. Sunlight is another matter. The effect of sunlight – actually falling on a plant, not just near it; in varying strength and of varying durations according to plant varieties – is to stimulate formation of buds and flowers. If you want to decorate with a flowering vine, you can be fairly sure that it should grow where it will receive more than just a touch of sunlight. It can, of course, be grown in any sunny place until it flowers, then brought in for colorful display in any spot.

Some vines and flowering houseplants will flower with less sunlight than others. Duration and intensity of sunlight also varies with the seasons and geographical areas. In a Northern winter, for example, the sun shines weakly and for a short time. At noon in August it is burning hot almost anywhere.

For most of the year the Southern sun is too intense for many plants. This may explain the origin of the popular term “shade plants,” applied to begonias, fuchsias, gesneriads, and some similar plants. In Florida, Texas and California they require protection against hot sun almost all year – but only in summer in cooler sections. They will not flower without some sunlight, and would be more accurately described as “semisun” plants. If you interpret “shade” as “dark” or “absence or weakness of light,” even foliage vines like philodendrons are not really “shade plants” – they do need light.

Except in tropical climates, most flowering plants like the flowering peace lily and vines happily accept all the sun they can get in winter. In summer they need at least early morning or late afternoon sun (and preferably both) or the sun that seeps through the light shade of a lath house or high-branched tree.

To summarize, all plants need light; vines grown for their foliage effect are usually content with good daylight or artificial light; flowering vines need proper artificial light or sunlight. And in each case, intensity and duration of light are important; but requirements vary for different types of plants.

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The flowers are waxy, three to five inches in diameter, in colors ranging from white through shades of yellow, green, brown, pink, and various subtle combinations of these. They keep for several weeks on the plant, and almost as long when cut. Unlike cattleyas, the flowers will open after the spike has been cut. If a spike is cut when the lower blooms arc open and put in water, it can be enjoyed for a long time while the other buds open in turn.

Cymbidiums can be grown in bark, osmunda fiber and other orchid growing media to which sometimes is added some well-rotted cow manure, or in a fibrous compost that allows free aeration. They must be kept well watered at all times, and they benefit from frequent syringing of the foliage in warm, bright weather. The syringing helps to keep under control their chief enemy, red spider. They are known as “heavy feeders” and should have a weekly application of chemical fertilizer during their growing season.

Shading has to be adjusted to the season and local conditions. During the summer, although they demand good light, the hot summer days allow the heat to build up too much in the greenhouse. Shading must be applied to the glass, but not so heavily as to deprive them of good light. It must be combined with free ventilation and a fan to keep the air circulating. The ventilators can be left open day and night. Some growers move the plants out of the greenhouse for the summer, either into a lath house or under tall trees. Although cymbidiums can take an occasional frost without apparent damage, it is wise to move them back into the greenhouse before frost is expected.

As cooler days come on, increase the amount of light gradually like in path lighting. As winter arrives, and flowering begins, shading will have to be adjusted to the locality. In cold climates, where the sun does not build up the heat in the greenhouse so much, less shading is necessary. In warmer climates, as on the West Coast, the flowers will have to be protected from the warm sun. Areas with more or less dull winters will allow cymbidiums to have clear glass.

New growth starts in late winter or early spring in some kinds, or in late summer in others. Growths that start early should produce spikes that autumn, but those that start in the summer will not flower until the following year. In the latter types you will see vegetative growths coming shortly before spikes start from the same pseudo-bulbs.

Cymbidium hybrids are superior to the species and are more easily obtained.

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Geraniums do best in cool temperatures, so should not be placed near a radiator or other source of heat. On the other hand, temperatures next to a cold window in winter are often considerably lower than room air. In this case, protect the plants by moving them away from the area close to the glass. Cold drafts are harmful and should be avoided.

Additional care consists in simply removing dead leaves, which are easily recognized when they become dry and crisp. In the spring, after all danger of frost is over, set plants directly into the outdoor garden where they will thrive. In late summer, cuttings taken and placed in vermiculite or cleansand and later potted when rooted will provide plants for the subsequent winter months.

Scented geraniums offer a wide choice of varieties, and for convenience are divided into six classes: lemon, mint, fruit, spice, rose and pungent.

Among those noted for rewarding fragrance is the distinctive lemon-scented geranium (Pelargonium crispum). Its many varieties differ only in small details and all are good. The leaves are small, curled and crisp green, not unlike parsley to the touch.

In sharp contrast is the peppermint-scented geranium (Pelargonium tomentosum). The large, shallowly-lobed leaves, very densely covered with fine, long, soft hairs, are a pleasure to stroke. The plant is very prostrate in habit.

The fruit-scented geraniums add to the list a wide variety of leaf odors. One of these is the apple geranium (Pelargonium odoratissimum), which, when lightly rubbed with the fingers, immediately releases the delicious aroma of a box of freshly-opened apples. Its light green leaves are scalloped with an exquisite, silky texture. A pleasing lime fragrance distinguishes the lime-scented geranium (Pelargonium nervosum), which has small, soft, firm leaves with sharp teeth.

Noteworthy among the spice-scented varieties is the nutmeg-scented (Pelargonium fragrans) and ginger-scented (Pelargonium torento).

The tiny cocoanut-scented geranium (Pelargonium parviflorum), has leaves which feel something like those of the lemon-scented. Actually, they are flatter and more delicate in texture. The plant grows low from a central crown and produces seeds which germinate easily.

Of wide fame is the rose geranium. Instead of a single variety, this is really a large number of varieties having rose-like perfume. Differing leaf shape, size and texture thus enables the collector to accumulate a number of “rose geraniums.” In the rose-scented group is Pelargonium denticulatum, which has finely-cut leaves, almost fern-like. They are best in the landscape together landscape grasses.

A similar situation exists among the so-called oak-leaf or pungent scented geraniums. Belonging to the Pelargonium quercifolium group, their leaves are deeply-lobed in varying degrees, besides being rough, hairy and distinctly sticky. The odor is pungent.

A desirable plant is the apricot-scented geranium (Pelargonium scabrum), which has smooth leaves, almost stiff in texture, with margins curled upward.

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