XXI 



SHKUBS 



THERE is no reason in the world for 

 believing that American gardens can- 

 not be as lovely as their European 

 antecedents, no reason at all for .not realizing 

 that many of them are already as lovely. In 

 speaking of the New World's early Pilgrim 

 settlers, Hawthorne, in Our Old Home, had 

 this to say apropos the beginning of gardening 

 in America: "There is not a softer trait to 

 be found in these stem men than that they 

 should have been sensible of their flower roots 

 clinging among the fibres of their rugged 

 hearts, and have felt the necessity of bringing 

 them over seas and making them hereditary in 

 the new land." 



That was the day of the old-fashioned gar- 

 den, the old-fashioned garden whose sway ex- 

 tended to Hawthorne's own time. We are in- 



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