No. 378.] REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE.. 455 
have a garden. If there is not a foot of land, there are porches or 
windows. Wherever there is sunlight, plants may be made to grow; 
and one plant in a tin can may be a more helpful and inspiring 
garden to some mind than a whole acre of lawn and flowers may be 
to another. The satisfaction of a garden does not depend upon the 
area, nor, happily, upon the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends 
upon the temper of the person. One must first seek to love plants 
and nature, and then to cultivate that happy peace of mind which is 
satisfied with little. He will be happier if he has no rigid and arbi- 
trary ideals, for gardens are coquettish, particularly with a novice. 
If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy ; and if the plants 
which thrive chance not to be the ones which he planted, they are 
plants, nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them. We are apt 
to covet the things which we cannot have; but we are happier when 
we love the things which 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 suppressed. The man who worries morning and night about 
the dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dande- 
lions... . If I were to write a motto over the gate of a garden, I 
should choose the remark which Socrates made as he saw the 
luxuries in the market: ‘ How much there is in the world that I do 
not want!’... I expect, then, that every person who reads this book 
will make a garden, or will try to make one; but if only tares grow 
where roses are desired, I must remind the reader that at the outset 
I advised pigweeds. The book, therefore, will suit everybody, —the 
experienced gardener, because it will echo of what he already knows; 
and the novice, because it will apply as well to a garden of burdocks 
as of onions.” 
After this cheery introduction follows a host of practical suggestions 
regarding the preparation of soil, selection and use of implements, 
choice of sites, arrangement of borders, shrubbery, and paths, times 
of planting, qualities and relative desirability of different species of 
plants, protection of plants from insects and parasites, desirable 
forms of hothouses, etc. Especially noteworthy among the many 
sketchy but very telling illustrations are the “informal flower 
border” (drawn by Mr. F. Schuyler Mathews) and the contrasting 
Pictures of “a house” and “a home.” The whole work is a most 
forcible argument for informality in horticulture. 
In connection with Garden-Making may be mentioned another 
