EXPLANATION 
Ir has been my desire to reconstruct the two books, “ Garden- 
Making” and ‘ Practical Garden-Book’’; but inasmuch as 
these books have found a constituency in their present form, 
it has seemed best to let them stand as they are and to con- 
tinue their publication as long as the demand maintains itself, 
and to prepare a new work on gardening. This new work I 
now offer as “‘A Manual of Gardening.” It is a combination 
and revision of the main parts of the other two books, together 
with much new material and the results of the experience of 
ten added years. 
A book of this kind cannot be drawn wholly from one’s own 
practice, unless it is designed to have a very restricted and 
local application. Many of the best suggestions in such a book 
will have come from correspondents, questioners, and those 
who enjoy talking about gardens; and my situation has been 
such that these communications have come to me freely. 
I have always tried, however, to test all such suggestions by 
experience and to make them my own before offering them 
to my reader. I must express my special obligation to those 
persons who collaborated in the preparation of the other two 
books, and whose contributions have been freely used in this 
one: to C. E. Hunn, a gardener of long experience; Professor 
Ernest Walker, reared as a commercial florist; Professor L. R. 
Taft and Professor F. A. Waugh, well known for their studies 
and writings in horticultural subjects. 
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