A FOREWORD AND A PLEA xv 



and men to keep them up, more than this is needed to 

 endow a garden with enduring charm and individuality. 

 Just as we wish to feel personality in a room, so do we 

 want to feel it in a garden, and this is the reason why 

 many a simple cottage garden, personally tended by its 

 owner, will be far greater in its appeal than a handsome 

 one possessing many attributes of beauty but left en- 

 tirely to paid care. And I feel that if our gardens are to 

 take their place beside those of the older countries it 

 rests with the American women to place them there. A 

 number of women have taken up landscape gardening as 

 a profession, and this is hopeful, for they will seek to in- 

 terest other women in their art; but it is a certainty that 

 if every American woman who has a piece of ground 

 under her control would spend upon it a small part of 

 the taste, ability, and energy which she applies to the 

 ordering and beautifying of her home, we should have 

 the most beautiful gardens in the world. It seems to 

 me, in my enthusiasm, that there could be no more up- 

 lifting and refining influence, not only upon the family 

 life, but upon the nation at large. 



It was John Sedding whose beautiful and appreciative 

 book on "Garden Craft"* I earnestly commend to all 

 lovers of the subject, who speaks of the garden as a 

 "sweetener of human existence," and says: "Apart 

 from its other uses, there is no spot like a garden for cul- 

 tivating the kindly social virtues. Its perfectness puts 



"" Garden Craft. Old and New." 



