4 LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



contrasted the English hawthorn hedge with the American barbed- 

 wire fence, and I was ready to take the next boat home, hopelessly 

 discouraged. 



But I dared not go back and hand out the cold comfort which 

 every Englishman offers us: "America will be quite as beautiful 

 a thousand years hence, but in a wholly different way." For one 

 thing we "can't wait." Again, it is only human nature to crave 

 what the English have. For instance, in the depths of my de- 

 spair I chanced to look out of the window. There stood a cedar 

 of Lebanon glowing with a mellow splendour, like a prophet that 

 has a message for the ages. It seemed as if I must have a cedar 

 of Lebanon for my suburban home at Elizabeth, N. J. Nothing 

 else in the whole wide world would do. 



But during the next week there gradually dawned a great light. 

 I remembered how Professor Sargent had found a cedar of Leb- 

 anon that will grow in New England. I saw that English yew has 

 its counterpart in the Japanese yew, which thrives with us. I 

 stood before the hundred-foot specimens of California redwood in 

 England and exulted, because I knew that our native hemlock 

 will give practically the same effect. And so I went about England 

 finding out what we can grow that looks like the English material 

 except to a dry-as-dust botanist. In two months I discovered 

 how we can reproduce practically all the important English effects 

 with native or Japanese material which will be long-lived in 

 America. The details are given chiefly in the second part of this 

 book; the gist of that story, however, I can give here in two sen- 

 tences : We have jailed to get English effects because we have used 

 European material. We can get many of the English effects by 

 using equivalents from America and the Far East (Japan, 

 China, and Korea), and we can save a million dollars a 



