PREFACE 



AMONG all the arts music alone can render to 

 poetic verse such enhancing effect as can the art 

 of gardening. Save only sculpture and architecture 

 no artist's product brings such enhancement to the 

 garden as does the book of the poet. 



To bring the book of verses underneath the 

 bough, especially the blossoming bough, for the 

 more perfect enjoyment of both, is so obviously 

 right and rewarding that to declare it so seems 

 out of tune with the doing of it. A merest hint 

 of the alliance so sets the harmonies of the spirit 

 into vibration that a justifying word is like a 

 spoken praise of music in the midst or, quite as 

 bad, in advance of its performance, and this fore- 

 word would itself be without excuse did it not say 

 something more. 



Hence this : That between garden and verse 

 there is so close a kinship that the rules of art for 

 either are adequate for the other. Poetic verse is 

 the gardening of thought. Gardening is the versi- 

 fication of nature's poetry. Of such an affinity are 

 the two that a merging of their powers is one of 

 those blessed cases in which one and one make 



