212 THE NEW GARDENING 



kind) than by making rules for the mass, I should not, 

 in ordinary circumstances, be disposed to deplore this 

 state of affairs. I should always expect out of earnest, 

 intelligent, competent, concentrated individual effort, 

 however isolated, a higher level of achievement than 

 from collective incompetence. The sum of achievement 

 is invariably in obverse ratio to the amount of inefficient 

 labour applied to it. But it is hard to suppose that the 

 artists, authors, lawyers, bank officials, upper-division 

 clerks and middle-class professional men generally who 

 make up the principal part of the population of a Garden 

 City can have a sufficient knowledge of gardening to 

 present a high standard of work. And with this doubt 

 existing a feeling of confidence about the horticultural 

 future of the Garden City cannot be entertained. 



Every Garden City movement ought to have an 

 Advisory Committee on which gardening is represented 

 by competent and influential men, pledged to spare no 

 effort to ensure the horticultural features being both 

 ample and harmonious. To lay out a town in which 

 each dwelling is provided with a dozen square perches 

 of ground, and each street planted with rows of scraggy 

 Plane trees, is not to make a Garden City. When no more 

 than this is done the word " garden/' with all its beautiful 

 associations and attractions, is merely used as a bait. 



I cannot, in the first place, conceive any Garden City 

 worthy of the name which does not possess a good city 

 garden, however small. And I think that on this city 

 garden should be lavished the best efforts of the pro- 

 moters, both as to thought and money. I think that it 

 should be brought into being directly the project is 

 decided upon, and that it should be found complete, a 

 cheering and educational influence, by the first resident 

 who takes in his furniture. When I visited Letchworth 



