98 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The charm of these books is the spirit of sympathy for nature and 

 the reflections colored by this spirit. The non-literary gardener 

 shares these pleasant reflections although he may lack power of 

 expressing them strikingly, and they make up a very important part 

 of his pleasure. 



Charles Dudley Warner regarded his garden chiefly in the light 

 of a delightful illustration of morals. He said : 



"The principal value of a private garden is not to give to the 

 possessor fruit and vegetables (that can be done better and cheaper 

 by the market gardeners) but to teach him patience and philosophy 

 and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations blighted, 

 leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation. The 

 garden thus becomes a test of character, as it was in the beginning." 



The literary gardeners mentioned gardened in part by proxy and 

 while that undoubtedly increased the opportunity for enjoying the 

 results it deprived them in part of the joys of gardening per se. It 

 is of gardening for its own sake, the emotions created and fostered 

 by the study of the subject, the planning, the wholesome contact 

 with the soil and the watching and tending of the plants that I am 

 speaking. 



No one needs the pleasures and other benefits conferred by 

 gardening more than the city dweller, and the need grows with the 

 crowding and the confining character of one's occupation. Sir 

 Thomas Lipton has put the case well, saying: "Gardening gives 

 you just enough to think about to be a distraction, yet not enough 

 to worry you." 



A very small space is sufficient to furnish this valuable mental 

 and physical relaxation, and even a window box is not to be despised 

 for its mental healing to a mind borne down with cares, but one 

 likes fair scope for one's energies, and nearly every one who ac- 

 quires a taste for gardening and discovers its possibilities is filled 

 with a desire for a garden that will supply his table with fresh 

 vegetables and keep his house abloom from May to November. 



The one practical clause of my remarks will be on this point. 

 From my experiments I can assure any one interested who has not 

 tried it for himself that this desire can be fulfilled in ample measure 

 in the backyard of an ordinary city lot in the hours which one 

 ordinarily spends in idling about the veranda to no particular pur- 

 pose. 



To plant the desire for making something grow is to set in mo- 

 tion a process of which the planter often has no conception. It will 

 never be shown in the statistics how many boys who have gardened 

 enthusiastically under the direction of the Minneapolis Improve- 

 ment League with seeds furnished by the league have had their at- 



