144 The Landscape Gardening Book 



protective walls of massive stone, and only the monastery gardens 

 escaped pillage and destruction under the incessant warfare of 

 the times, flower gardens, as such, were unknown. Gardens 

 were a vital necessity and not an ornamental luxury in that 

 stem age. They were stocked with those plants which furnished 

 either food or medicine, with no room for aught else. But many 

 of the latter were the flowering plants which are the isolated and 

 pampered aristocrats of to-day's gardens; so after all the old- 

 time utility did not mean the grim utiloveliness which modem 

 garden methods have led us to associate with the word. 



It is just a return to this ancient sincerity and simplicity that 

 I would urge, in the development of our present-day gardening. 

 This by no means implies approval of a potato patch adjacent 

 to the entrance drive or cabbage under the living-room windows. 

 It only implies a plea for a sane restoration of useful vegetation — 

 and by useful I mean, in this instance, of practical, material 

 use — to its rightful place and dignity. 



We are called a nation of suburban dwellers, yet there are 

 thousands and thousands of suburban places in the land where 

 a vegetable garden is never dreamed of, though much time is 

 spent — and money too— in the care of flowers and lawns, and 

 in "polite gardening." Students of economics have recently 

 pointed out that the enormous waste which this system entails, 

 is unquestionably one of the causes of the high cost of living, 

 under which American shoulders are groaning. This seems 

 more and more reasonable, the more it is considered. 



Eight plots, 50 X TOO feet, are, roughly speaking, equal to one 

 acre of land. Reser\'ing one-third of such a typical plot for the 

 house, and one-third for lawn and as a concession to neighborhood 

 conventionalities, there remains one-third for garden. Multiplied 

 by eight this amounts to one-third of an acre; and one-third 



