THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



a little more care for the fundamentals of art, 

 of all art, could easily surpass her present floral 

 charm. Yet in her gardens there is one further 

 point calling for approval and imitation: the 

 very high trimming of the stems of lofty trees. 

 Here many a reader will feel a start of resent- 

 ment; but in the name of the exceptional 

 beauty one may there see resulting from the 

 practice let us allow the idea a moment's enter- 

 tainment, put argument aside and consider a 

 concrete instance whose description shall be 

 our closing word. 



Across the street in which, that January, we 

 sojourned (we were two), there was a piece of 

 ground of an ordinary town square's length and 

 somewhat less breadth. It had been a private 

 garden. Its owner had given it to the city. 

 Along its broad side, which our windows looked 

 out upon, stood perfectly straight and upright 

 across the sky to the south of them a row of 

 magnolias (grandiflora) at least sixty feet high, 

 with their boles, as smooth as the beach, 

 trimmed bare for two-thirds of their stature. 

 The really decorative marks of the trimming 



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