COTTAGE GARDENS 



that artistic gardening, however informal, is 

 nine-tenths constructive. 



Yet particularly because such gardening is so, 

 and because some of its finest rewards are so 

 slow-coming and long-abiding, there is no stage 

 of life in which it is so reasonable for man or 

 woman to love and practise the art as when 

 youth is in its first full stature and may garden 

 for itself and not merely for posterity. "John," 

 said his aged father to one of our living poets, 

 *'I know now how to transplant full-grown trees 

 successfully. Do it a long time ago." Let the 

 stripling plant the sapling. 



Youth, however, and especially our American 

 youth, has his or her excuses, such as they are. 

 Of the garden or the place to be gardened, "It's 

 not mine," he or she warmly says; "it's only my 

 father's," or "my mother's." 



Young man ! Young maiden ! True, the 

 place, so pathetically begging to be gardened, 

 may not be your future home, may never be 

 your property, and it is right enough that a 

 feeling for ownership should begin to shape your 

 daily life. But let it not misshape it. You 



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