Foreword 



or less sedentary, will get health and pleasure 

 and profit out of even a garden so small as to 

 seem hardly worth the name. 



Those who know nothing of gardens are 

 quite likely to make the mistake of thinking 

 that it is not worth while to do anything in 

 this line unless one has considerable space to 

 devote to it. Of course the larger the garden 

 the more can be grown in it, but it does not 

 necessarily follow from this that a good deal 

 cannot be grown on a small piece of ground. I 

 have often been astonished to see how many 

 vegetables could be grown in the back yard of 

 a village or city home. Those who are familiar 

 with the garden literature of twenty or twenty- 

 five years ago, will no doubt remember a little 

 book by Charles Barnard, entitled "My Hand- 

 kerchief Garden," in which the author tells a 

 most entertaining story of what he succeeded 

 in growing on a tiny bit of ground. To the 

 inexperienced the book reads more like a fairy 

 tale than anything else, and those who "don't 

 take stock in gardens" have ridiculed it, de- 

 claring that it tells of a garden that existed 

 on paper only. But this I know to be untrue. 

 The garden written about actually existed, and 



14 



