Vlll 



behind him. What better friends can a man make 

 for his declining years than the trees and flowers; 

 what fairer heritage can he leave to his children 

 than a garden? But if one persistently snubs 

 Nature at forty, she may return the compliment 

 at three-score-years-and-ten. 



When a man buys a place in the country the 

 first thing his wife thinks of is a garden, and it is 

 generally the last thing that he makes. If he is 

 chided for his lack of interest in the gentle art of 

 horticulture, he will probably reply that he has 

 become discouraged since strolling through the 

 grounds of his rich neighbour who has laid out 

 some of his surplus millions in glass houses, oran- 

 geries, vineries, velvet lawns, statues of Pan, foun- 

 tains, sylvan lakes, nymph.ean groves and grots 

 (with nymphs) and many other outward and visi- 

 ble signs of modern opulence. And discourage- 

 ment would no doubt be natural unless he possessed 

 modest tastes and a well-defined idea of the gen- 

 eral fitness of things. 



The following chapters were designed to point 

 out to the owners of small and unostentatious 

 places a way to plant their grounds and make their 

 gardens with small expense; to use the best known 

 indigenous trees and the shrubs and plants that 

 have been identified for so long with American 

 gardens that they have become American by 



