POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE 



setting, will induce. The best places acknowledge the 

 fatherhood of the country about them, adapting the 

 natural aspect to their own uses, but neither ignoring 

 nor violating it. 



It is only when the people at large take to doing 

 anything that an actual vitality ensues, and, therefore, 

 the most encouraging symptom of a new garden era 

 lies in the general interest perceptible in many direc- 

 tions. There are the numerous and successful books 

 and magazines of a technical sort, for instance, ad- 

 dressed to persons whose chief asset is a personal 

 enthusiasm for improving whatever lies at hand and a 

 readiness to undertake the labor of laying out and culti- 

 vating a small place with their own hands. The gar- 

 den triumphant! Delightful thought. It is this same 

 general desire that has long existed in England, and 

 that has put her so far ahead of us in the matter of 

 gardens. Even in the use of window boxes, the Eng- 

 lish towns exceed anything done here. London, dur- 

 ing the season, looks like a flower garden stood on 

 end, so ubiquitous are these tiny flower beds. The 

 English man or woman must have flowers, cannot get 

 along without them where there is the least chance to 

 make them grow. And precisely at the moment when 

 an Englishman becomes possessed of a bit of ground, 

 a garden begins to evolve. 



The American tendency for doing everything in a 

 hurry, and without a feeling for the permanence of 



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