GARDENING BOOKS 3 



ten. Of course, all these books have been good 

 and useful. It would be ungrateful, at the least, 

 for the present writer to say otherwise ; but 

 books grow old, and the advice becomes too fa- 

 miliar. The sentences need to be transposed and 

 the order of the chapters varied, now and then, 

 or interest lags. Or, to speak plainly, a new 

 book of advice upon handicraft is needed in every 

 decade. There has been a long and worthy pro- 

 cession of these handbooks, Gardiner & Hepburn, 

 M'Mahon, Cobbett original, pungent, ubiquitous 

 Cobbett! Fessenden, Bridgeman, Sayers, Buist, 

 and a dozen more, each one a little richer because 

 the others had been written. But even the fact 

 that these books pass into oblivion does not 

 deter another hand from making still another 

 venture ! 



I expect, then, that every person who reads 

 this book will make a garden, or will try to 

 make one ; but if only tares grow where roses 

 are desired, I must remind the reader that at the 

 outset I advised pigweeds. The book, therefore, 

 will suit everybody, the experienced gardener, 

 because it will be an echo of what he already 

 knows ; and the novice, because it will apply as 

 well to a garden of burdocks as of onions. 



A garden is the personal part of an estate, that 

 area which is most intimately associated with the 

 private life of the home. Originally, the garden 

 was the area inside the enclosure or lines of forti- 



