PREFACE 



This little book is designed to serve as First Aid to the 

 beginning gardener. It is arranged to be of use especially to 

 the owner of the small place who plans and makes his own 

 garden, and whose means and time are not unlimited. 



Very likely the expert gardener can find dozens and dozens 

 of omissions, and will call to mind plant after plant which 

 might have been included, nay, even of the sort which Ev- 

 ery Garden Ought to Have. But the expert gardener is asked 

 to remember, that the book is meant especially for him who 

 is not yet a gardener, but would like to be — ^for Pilgrim start- 

 ing for the Delectable Mountains, as it were, rather than for 

 Pilgrim arrived — and that it is with plants as it is with children: 

 any one desirous of adding these to his establishment is safer 

 beginning with one or two, and these sturdy ones, than by 

 adopting a whole asylum of promising orphans. 



Therefore, only those plants which are surest to grow are 

 properly within the compass of this book. Once the garden 

 is growing and it is easy enough to add the "silverbells and 

 cockle-sheUs, and all the pretty things in a row" that the 

 most bewildering seed catalogue may herald. 



To the editors of the Century Magazine, the Ladies Home 

 Journal, Harper's Bazaar, the Designer, and Country Life in 

 America, the author is much indebted for the courtesy of allow- 

 ing the use here of material which has appeared in the pages 

 of those publications. She wishes, also, to express her appre- 



