x PREFACE 



tecture or gardening. Heretofore, a national style has developed 

 slowly and casually. But I believe the happy day could be 

 hastened by a sort of horticultural survey of America. There must 

 be some garden photographer who is as divinely ordained for 

 such work as Jowett was to translate Plato, or Curtis to portray 

 disappearing types of Indian. Such a man, with a good motor- 

 car and travelling library, could spend a month in a limestone 

 district, for example, and show what are the chief lime-lovers 

 and lime-haters among trees, shrubs, vines, etc. Such a man 

 might discover in five or ten years facts that would save us 

 millions of dollars and several centuries on the long road we must 

 travel before America can be as lovely as England. 



For the idea of this book and the chance to realize it I am 

 indebted to Mr. F. N. Doubleday. 



Since these chapters appeared in Country Life in America 

 and The Garden Magazine they have been revised and consider- 

 ably enlarged. In concluding these essays on what England can 

 teach us about gardening, I wish to thank the many readers who 

 have written me words of encouragement from all parts of the 

 country. I had expected that my view-point would be unpopular. 

 Certainly it cannot please either Anglophobes or Anglomaniacs. 

 But evidently there are many Americans who agree with me 

 that we are wasting millions of dollars every year in the literal 

 imitation of English gardening ideas that are wholly unsuited to 

 our climate and ways of life, and that the noblest lesson English 

 gardens can teach us is this: Let every country use chiefly its own 

 native trees, shrubs, vines and other permanent material, and let the 

 style of gardening grow naturally out of necessity, the soil and the 

 new conditions. When we stop imitating and do this, America 

 will soon find herself. 



