Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 139, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1917 — Home Town Helps [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Home Town Helps

UGLY POINTS MAY BE HIDDEN Permanent Fixtures, Such as Fence and Clothes Posts, Should Be Made Things of. Beauty. The most noticeable permanent features of the backyard, which is the usual place for the city garden, are the fence and the clothes posts. They remain grim and uncompromising, flourish and flowers bloom and after the leaves have withered and fallen. The garden magazines advise massing shrubs on the fences, letting vines climb the clothes posts or stringing wire netting for nasturtiums to climb upon. This is well in summer, but when the leaves have fallen and the naked fence Is again exposed, «the dragging vines blow in the wind, and nettiflg and all fall in an uncomely, heap together unless the careful gardener removes them. At any rate the fence and the posts can only be covered with foliage and bioom during a short period. The solution of the difficulty then is to make the fence and posts, the ugly and permanent features, things of beauty. A fence'may be made of such a pattern as not to be offensive to the eye, and if it is possible to have It of brick or stone it need not be a suppott for vines unlgss one desires it. The posts, too. may be placed In unconspicuous positions. They may be painted green, a soft color, harmonlz; ing well with grass, vines and flowers. These two difficulties disposed of, one may begin the planning of the backyard city garden with confidence.