THE PLEASURES OF GARDENING. 97 



THE PLEASURES OF GARDENING. 



MISS MARTHA SCOTT ANDERSON, MINNEAPOLIS. 



One always tries to escape a feeling of inferiority and struggles 

 still more to avoid an exhibition of it. As I can have no hope of 

 securing recognition for the results of my gardening — and indeed 

 all such idea is and has been foreign to my mind — I can only meet 

 you on a footing of equality through my interest in and enjoyment 

 of gardening. 



The pleasure in gardening is shared by all who take an intel- 

 ligent interest in the subject, but it is made up of somewhat differ- 

 ing elements in the gardener with whom it is a profession and the 

 amateur with whom it is an avocation. To the latter there is no 

 thought of gain, and his pleasure is measured in very small degree 

 by his success. Every gardener takes pride in having something 

 worth while to show for his labors, but the most interesting phase 

 of gardening to my mind is the experimenting, and the lamentable 

 failures afford just as much information and are as absorbingly in- 

 teresting as the successes. 



Without doubt the most practical of you have fallen in some 

 measure under the spell of the seed catalogue with its rosy and 

 elusive promises. A strictly truthful chronicle of my principle of 

 gardening is to provide enough easily managed and reliable flowers 

 and vegetables to keep up a fairly presentable appearance in the 

 garden, and to supply the table and house, and then to let my m- 

 vestigating spirit run riot in trying about every new thing under the 

 sun : that is, things new to me. In this way I am steadily acquiring 

 at least a casual acquaintance with the entire florists' list of garden 

 flowers as well as with many new and strange vegetables. Without 

 so great a liking for trying things for myself I should have been 

 obliged to maintain a sort of an experimental station if I wanted 

 this kind of knowledge, for neither descriptions nor illustrations 

 serve altogether to familiarize one with the exact appearance of 

 plants. One of the common results of these floral experiences is 

 to find hidden under some high sounding name a plant familiar 

 from childhood. 



One might have hesitated to present gardening merely as a 

 means of affording pleasure were it not for the distinguished sup- 

 port of writers ancient and modern who have dwelt upon its de- 

 lights, and of semi-serious books few recent ones have had more 

 appreciative audiences of a very respectable size and the highest 

 intelligence than "Elizabeth of the German Garden," the Commu- 

 ter's Wife, she of the Hardy Garden and the Journcyer to Nature. 



