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FOREWORD 



ANY book about gardens, written for the pleasure of 

 writing, must have its sources in dreams. The 

 visions of gardens beautiful and retired hover before 

 the imagination, and no real garden, however humble, but 

 is invested in celestial light of cherished hopes of what it 

 may become in fragrant flowers or what it might have been 

 had fortune been kind. 



The facts and the fancies of this book were discovered 

 in various gardens, some centuries old, fruitful of memories 

 of those whose hands have long since turned to dust, others 

 in the joyous public gardens with parterres, and the most 

 precious of all in the quiet gardens of my friends. 



"Gardening," said a wise writer, "is among the purest of 

 pleasures," and one tossed on the fretful world knows that 

 there is no purer delight than that which comes to the human 

 heart with friends in gardens. To many friends, far and 

 wide, I owe whatever inspiration lives in these pages. 



The illustration of the book was an afterthought carried 

 out in the desire to suggest the art of landscape gardening. 

 Credit is gratefully recorded to those who aided with the 

 pictures, and especially to Jens Jensen, Jessie T. Beals, 

 Mary H. -Northend, J. Horace McFarland, W. H. Rau, 

 Henry Fuhrman, E. L. Fowler, Alice Enk, and Mode 

 Wineman. 



