Nowhere do flowers grow more luxuriantly, in greater variety, or through
a season more prolonged than on the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and
California,--soil, moisture, and temperature combining to make gardening
a simpler task than it is elsewhere. The shore country of Southern
California is a perpetual garden, with a climate almost unrivalled for
plants and for humans. North of San Francisco the near approach of the
Japan Current produces a climate quite similar to that of England, and
with the exception of possibly two months (and even then an occasional
Rose may bloom) flowers are found all the year round. This favored
section of the Northwest nevertheless is not visited with as much
sunshine as is found elsewhere, but its gardens blossom with little
assistance save from the frequent rainfall, more welcome to plants than
to men.
In Kansas and the other flat and fertile States of the Middle West the
garden period, on account of the long, dry summers, is usually limited
to the weeks from late March to late June. In the more northern
temperature of the lake region gardens which flourish all summer are
numerous.
The Atlantic States have a shorter blooming season than those on the
Pacific coast. Throughout the South, east of New Mexico, the warm
weather season is as prolonged as on the Pacific coast, and yet in the
Southern States garden bloom is checked half-way through the summer by
excessive heat and drought (except in the favored mountainous
localities), which at least interrupt the continuous succession of
flowers. For this reason gardening in the South except in spring, or in
high altitudes, is generally discouraged.
Although not stated as an indisputable fact, scientifically, we are
inclined to believe that the seacoast section of the Maryland peninsula
is the locality in the East especially favorable to the most prolonged
season of bloom. Lying between sea and bay, this particular district in
the latitude for early spring and late frost enjoys also the benefit of
surrounding waters, escaping thereby the parching summer climate from
which gardens of the interior suffer, to the west and south and to the
north, almost as far as Philadelphia.
In Maine conditions are different; April and May gardens are
conspicuously absent. The flower season generally begins in mid-June and
does not much exceed three months, but in that period the bloom is
exceptionally luxuriant. The season is necessarily a short one, as it is
throughout this latitude westward to Oregon, where after reaching the
Coast or Cascade Range there is a change and the climate becomes more
like that of England than Maine. Along the Atlantic coast from Maine to
New Jersey, where the climate is ideal for flowers, the greatest
proportion of Eastern gardens may be found, on the shore and inland as
well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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