GARDEN \YRITINGS IN AMERICA. 

 By Leonard Barron, Garden City, N. Y. 



Delivered before the Society, February 26, 1916. 



The development of strictly garden writings in America is a very 

 recent growth, so recent, indeed, that it may be claimed as a feature 

 of the last twenty-five years. Although gardening books have 

 been published in America in fairly considerable numbers from the 

 very beginning of the country, still many of these have been of 

 European origin. It has been a common practice to import sheets 

 of English books and to bind them up in this country, with a special 

 title page and an American publisher's imprint. In other cases, 

 the plates have been imported and an edition put out over here. 

 This has led to much confusion in the past and we can lay claim to 

 have produced only very recently any strictly American writings 

 on the fine art of garden craft — writings that really reflect the 

 native spirit. This, however, has been but a natural reflection of 

 the condition of the art of garden making itself. 



The written word is the permanent record of events, and there is 

 yet much work to be done in the study of our garden writings from 

 an historical point of view. Those who are concerned with this 

 phase of the question will find the most comprehensive review to 

 date in the third volume of the new Standard Cyclopedia of Horti- 

 culture. That the literature of our American gardening should be 

 thus flavored with foreign lore up to very recent times is nothing to 

 be surprised at, since not only were the beginnings of American gar- 

 den craftmanship based on the practices of England and the conti- 

 nent, but also the actual materials — the plants — employed were 

 imported; and indeed an overwhelming proportion of our early 

 practitioners gathered their experience abroad before coming to 

 these shores. This City of Boston is inseparably associated with 

 the beginnings of gardening here in America, of which fact the 

 organization under whose auspices we are now gathered is in 

 itself sufficient proof; and today this section of the country still 



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