THE AMERICAN GARDEN 



Here there is a word to be added in the inter- 

 est of home-lovers, whose tastes we properly 

 expect to find more highly trained than those of 

 the average tenant cottager. Our American 

 love of spaciousness leads us to fancy that — 

 not to-day or to-morrow, but somewhere in a 

 near future — we are going to unite our unfenced 

 lawns in a concerted park treatment: a sort 

 of wee horticultural United States comprised 

 within a few city squares; but ever our American 

 individualism stands broadly in the way, and 

 our gardens almost never relate themselves to 

 one another with that intimacy which their 

 absence of boundaries demands in order to take 

 on any special beauty, nobility, delightsomeness, 

 of gardening. The true gardener — who, if he 

 is reading this, must be getting very tired of our 

 insistent triteness — carefully keeps in mind the 

 laws of linear and of aerial perspective, no mat- 

 ter how large or small the garden. The relative 

 stature of things, both actual and prospective; 

 their breadth; the breadth or slenderness, dark- 

 ness or lightness, openness or density, of their 

 foliage; the splendor or delicacy of their flowers, 



65 



