SHRUBS 143 



clined to consider the introduction of the for- 

 mal garden into the American landscape as 

 somewhat luxurious, because we have been in 

 the habit of liking our flower beds and borders 

 as a lovely jumble of growing things, and the 

 nice orderly restraint with its very paucity of 

 bloom in what we call the Italian gardens, the 

 quaint but stiffly balanced clipped Evergreens 

 we have adopted from English gardens have, 

 perhaps, not even yet entirely completely to 

 appeal to us so thoroughly in the past as it now 

 does. A few years ago we were paying little 

 or no attention to gardens, but just loving them 

 when we came across a fine one ; now all that is 

 different. Every one of us wants a garden. 

 We come about in our discovering gardening 

 much as did Emerson when he wrote of what 

 he called his "new plaything" — forty acres of 

 woodland bordering Walden pond. "I go 

 thither every afternoon and cut with my 

 hatchet an Indian path thro' the thicket, all 

 along the bold shore and open the finest pic- 

 tures." But it was Emerson who laughingly 

 declares : "A brave scholar should shun it like 

 gambling, and take refuge in cities and hotels 

 from these pernicious enchantments." He 



