PREFACE 



THE writer of these pages does not 

 presume that this book will teach 

 those who love gardens how to 

 carry out successfully the ornamentation of 

 their grounds unaided. As well expect a 

 book on painting to teach a lover of land- 

 scapes how to paint his own picture. It 

 may teach him how to appreciate good 

 pictures and how to tell the good from the 

 bad, and why some compositions are effec- 

 tive and why some are not. This is also 

 true of any book on landscape gardening. 



The designing of gardens and the selec- 

 tion of their accessories is as much an art 

 as painting. One uses paint and canvas as 

 its medium. The other uses Nature's own 

 materials and composes them to make a 

 picture with the very landscape itself, 

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