THE AMERICAN GARDEN 



their small scale, lovely gardens about their 

 dwellings at virtually no cost and with no bur- 

 densome care, get a notion that this, and this 

 only, is artistic gardening and hence that a home 

 garden for oneself would be too expensive and 

 troublesome to be thought of. On the other 

 hand, a few are tempted to mimic them on a 

 petty scale, and so spoil their little grass-plots 

 and amuse, without entertaining, their not more 

 tasteful but only less aspiring neighbors. In 

 Northampton, in our Carnegie prize contest — 

 so called for a very sufficient and pleasant reason 

 — our counsel is to avoid all mimicry in garden- 

 ing as we would avoid it in speech or in gait. 

 Sometimes we do not mind being repetitious. 

 "In gardening," we say — as if we had never 

 said it before — "almost the only thing which 

 costs unduly — in money or in mortification — 

 is for one to try to give himself somebody else's 

 garden !" Often we say this twice to the same 

 person. 



One of the reasons we give against it is that it 

 leads to toy gardening, and toy gardening is of 

 all sorts the most pitiful and ridiculous. "No 

 true art," we say, "can tolerate any make-be- 



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