WHERE TO PLANT WHAT 



OFTEN one's hands are too heavily veneered 

 with garden loam for him to go to his 

 books to verify a quotation. It was the great 

 Jefferson, was it not, who laid into the founda- 

 tions of American democracy the imperishable 

 maxim that *'That gardening is best which gar- 

 dens the least"? My rendition of it may be 

 more a parody than a quotation but, whatever 

 its inaccuracy, to me it still sounds Jefferso- 

 nian — Joseph Jeffersonian. 



Whether we read it "garden" or "govern," it 

 has this fine mark of a masterful utterance, that 

 it makes no perceptible effort to protect itself 

 against the caviller or the simpleton; from men, 

 for instance, who would interpret it as meaning 

 that the only perfect government, or gardening, 

 is none at all. Speaking from the point of view 

 of a garden -lover, I suppose the true signification 

 is that the best government is the government 



81 



