8 The American Flower Garden 



profession or calling, and poverty or self-conceit can be the only 

 excuse for not getting the benefit of expert advice. 



Special emphasis needs to be laid upon the gardener s sense 

 of proportion for the very practical reason that a design, no matter 

 how excellent artistically, can give little pleasure to its owner unless 

 it be carefully proportioned to the size of his purse. It is distress 

 ing to see neglected trees, starved shrubbery that cannot bloom, 

 worm-eaten roses, weedy lawns and degenerate flowers because 

 their owner, in attempting to do too much, could not afford to 

 care for them properly. Better a well tended little flower bed 

 than an acre of disheartening failures. But is it not equally dis 

 tressing to see palatial houses set in the midst of cramped, 

 confined and ugly grounds that have little money and no taste 

 expended upon them? Long ago Lord Bacon observed: &quot;A 

 man shall ever see that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, 

 men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if 

 gardening were the greater perfection.&quot; 



In democratic America it has come to be thought an indica 

 tion of social selfishness when much is spent upon the interior of 

 a home, for the gratification of the family, to the exclusion of worthy 

 adornment of the home grounds, in whose beauty every passer-by 

 may share. A well-known architect, who is also an expert 

 landscape gardener, stipulates, before taking a contract, that at 

 least one-tenth of the cost of a suburban or country house shall be 

 expended upon its proper setting. He argues both from the 

 artistic and the altruistic points of view. Certain it is that the 

 modest small homes and gardens which are his special delight 

 possess rare unity and charm. He executes a picture complete in 

 itself before he leaves his task. 



The true artist out-of-doors must needs have a well developed 



