2 MANUAL OF GARDENING 
We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but 
we are happier when we love the things that grow because they 
must. A patch of lusty pigweeds, growing and crowding in 
luxuriant abandon, may be a better and more worthy object 
of affection than a bed of coleuses in which every spark of life 
and spirit and individuality has been sheared out and sup- 
pressed. The man who worries morning and night about the 
dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dande- 
lions. Each blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it 
shines in the exuberant sunlight of the growing spring, and 
attracts the insects to its bosom. Little children like the dan- 
delions: why may not we? Love the things nearest at hand; 
and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the gate 
of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said 
to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market, ‘‘How much 
there is in the world that I do not want!” 
I verily believe that this paragraph I have just written is 
worth more than all the advice with which I intend to cram the 
succeeding pages, notwithstanding the fact that I have most 
assiduously extracted this advice from various worthy but, 
happily, long-forgotten authors. Happiness is a quality of 
a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the anticipation of 
joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so many 
books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all 
these books have been good and useful. It would be ungrate- 
ful, at the least, for the present writer to say otherwise; but 
books grow old, and the advice becomes too familiar. The 
sentences need to be transposed and the order of the chapters 
varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or,to speak plainly, 
a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in every decade, 
or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There 
has been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks, — 
Gardiner & Hepburn, M’Mahon, Cobbett — original, pungent, 
versatile Cobbett !— Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers, 
