vi PREFACE 



every plant that grows even the humblest weed, but I think it 

 a pity to wince at any suggestion that one plant is better adapted 

 to a given purpose than another. If hemlock makes a better 

 hedge than Norway spruce, why not say so? Why continue to 

 waste thousands of dollars on a plant that fails to do the job? 

 The Englishman does well to love every plant separately for its 

 own sake, but the life-blood of science is the comparative method. 

 We have big things to accomplish in America and we want the 

 best there is to be had for every purpose. 



As to manner my pen falters at dedicating to so finished 

 a literary man as Moses Coit Tyler a book that would probably 

 seem to him the negation of everything literary. I have used 

 slang, which he abhorred, and I have written like one business 

 man to another, instead of following the classical models that I 

 studied in college. But this is an age of "new faces, other minds." 

 It is an age of "big business," and the big things in gardening 

 are generally done by successful business men. The wives may 

 plan the gardens, but the husbands usually pay for them, and there- 

 fore I address chiefly the men men who can give and take 

 hard knocks good-naturedly. For you men need some straight- 

 from-the-shoulder blows. You do not love gardening enough. 

 You gag at the cost. And you do not employ the best advisers. 



You may be good buyers of bonds, but not of plants. You can 



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cut the price, but you can't get the best results that way. What 

 you need is to study the subject matter of gardening, which is quite 

 as important and interesting as sport. 



The plain truth is that we can never get an American style 

 of gardening until we get new kinds of books and periodicals. 

 The Old World models will not do. This is clearest in the case 

 of the magazines. The commonest type in England is the penny 



