INTRODUCTION 



Timeliness, which is of importance in achieving success 

 in almost any undertaking, is particularly important in 

 garden operations. One may postpone building a garage, 

 or buying a new car, for a week or a month, or even six 

 months, and when he again considers the matter find 

 conditions the same as they were before; but the delay of a 

 week or two in making a hot-bed, planting a hardy border, 

 or setting out evergreens, may mean upsetting a garden 

 plan for a whole season, the loss of a year's time in getting 

 results, or the waste of expensive plants. Conditions of 

 temperature and soil are constantly changing, and unless 

 one can keep the garden work caught up, or a little ahead, 

 the routine tasks caimot be done successfully and with a 

 minimum of labor, nor time be gained for those extra things 

 which make it possible to build up and improve the place. 



On the other hand, the gardener who imagines that his 

 work can be reduced to a set of rules and formulae, followed 

 and applied according to special days marked on the cal- 

 endar, is but preparing himself for a double disappointment. 

 Few things are so certain to be uncertain as the seasons and 

 the weather; and these, rather than a set of dates, even for 

 a single locahty, form the signs which the real gardener fol- 

 lows. That is the great trouble with much book and mag- 

 azine gardening. 



But there is a more important argument against such 

 follow-the-rule gardening, even were it possible to succeed 

 with it. It would be a joyless gardening! It might be 

 cheaper, but it would be little more attractive, than garden- 

 ing at the grocers' and the florists', — where the most 

 certain results are to be had with the least labor. 



No : to be efficient, and what is even more important, to 

 find exhilaration and recreation in his work, or hers, the 



