PREFACE 



The little garden, as it will be considered in these pages, means 

 not exclusively the spaces for flowers available in a town or sub- 

 urban lot. It means, too, the setting for those spaces — the 

 ground about the house, and that in which the garden lies. It is 

 a comprehensive term, to include the planting, planning, and 

 treatment of the whole of a piece of ground of a size to be found 

 most generally in towns and suburbs. 



Material for the good small garden lies so near us. Native 

 trees and shrubs, in these days of the Ford car, are at our doors; 

 the flora of the woods, the envy of all foreign gardeners, which 

 even the strictest of the preservers of wild flowers is willing that 

 one should gather for purposes of propagation — these native 

 plants are among the finest in any land. Almost every communi- 

 ity has its good nurseryman, while a postcard brings that rain- 

 bow breath of summer in January, the catalogue of flower-seeds. 

 There is no excuse, none, for leaving the groimd empty and ugly 

 about our houses. "Some day," said Tchekhov, the Russian 

 poet, wistfully talking in his rose-garden with a friend, "some 

 day all Russia will be a garden like this." It may be that the 

 fearful fertilizing of these years in Russia will bring forth beauty, 

 even the beauty of roses; but on our own quieter continent, where 

 the arts of peace are inteUigently practised and loved, there 

 should be, there will be, millions of little gardens for the satis- 

 faction and delight of men and women, but, above all, for flow- 

 ery pathways in which to set the youngest feet, the feet of the 

 children. 



The little garden will save the children. In it the children are 

 the first to feel at home; for where is the baby who does not love 



