138 GARDEN CITIES 



gardener is a Kew-trained man, part of whose business is to help 

 every one who comes for advice. Thus, no matter how poor a man 

 may be, or how ignorant of gardening, when he comes to Bourn- 

 ville there is no chance for him to get discouraged. He knows that 

 he can produce twenty dollars worth of vegetables and fruit if he is 

 simply industrious. And all the preliminary work has been done 

 for him. Of course the tenant pays for all that preliminary work 

 in his rent, but it is distributed over a long period and the thing is 

 a small item compared with the cost of house and lot. Then, too, 

 he can get free booklets on gardening, describing the best shrubs 

 and small trees for Bournville, and there is a free library of garden- 

 ing books. And last, but not least, his neighbours on either side 

 will help him in every emergency, for there is a splendid spirit of 

 fraternalism in a community where every person is enthusiastic 

 about gardening. 



If you were a resident of Bournville, you would come home 

 after your day's work and sit down to dinner in a room with beauti- 

 ful French windows, that open directly on an exquisite bit of lawn, 

 surrounded by flowers. Beyond this you would see fruits and 

 vegetables in orderly array. And when you rose from the table 

 you would feel an irresistible impulse to throw aside those French 

 windows and step right into your garden. Before you realized it 

 you would have done an hour's work there and the chances are that 

 your family would have joined you in it. For Bournville's experience 

 seems to show that gardening is the best of all family hobbies. 



In short, the garden city idea appealed to me so strongly that 

 I came home wishing that I could devote the rest of my life to it. 

 My family spends twice as much as the ordinary family in Bourn- 

 ville and does not have half as much to show for it. And as soon 

 as America gets a city like Bournville every visitor to it will be 



