Some of the newer styles of garden booKs that are worthy specimens of the booKmaKer's art. What a change from the old regime 



Gardening Books for Christmas Presents— By Thomas McAdam 



MOST HORTICULTURAL WORKS A DISGRACE TO THE BOOKMAKER'S ART— THE FEW THAT HAVE A DISTINCT 

 CHRISTMAS OR GIFT QUALITY; ATTRACTIVE COVERS, PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SOMETHING TO SAY 



TEN years ago there were mighty few 

 gardening books that were fit for 

 Christmas presents. So far as subject matter 

 went, there were plenty of sober, useful books, 

 but as to form, they were hopelessly un- 

 beautiful. 



Only nine years ago I took my brother 

 (the practical member of the family, and 

 cheerfully non-horticultural) to see a distin- 

 guished professor's library. Throwing open 

 the door, I exclaimed with pride: "There's 

 the largest collection of American books on 

 horticulture in existence!" 



"Humph!" he replied, after one sweeping 

 glance, "Not much to brag about either, 

 is it?" 



I gasped. Of course, when I first came 

 to study horticulture (at no early age), the 

 farm and garden books struck me as a "hay- 

 seed ,lot," but in the years that followed I 

 had learned to love them for their real merit. 

 Disillusionment is good for us, but it isn't 

 always pleasant at the time. 



The truth is that there was scarcely a book 

 in the whole collection that a gentleman 

 would care to have in his parlor. They had 

 the look of the barn about them — faded 

 covers, cheap paper, small type, scanty 

 margins and gruesome old woodcuts; they 

 abounded in realistic portraits of hairy cater- 

 pillars, apple scab, plum rot, and the like — 

 all in heroic size — and no book was complete 

 without a certain classical picture of the 

 codlin moth's offspring eating the heart out 

 of an apple of iron texture. It used to fasci- 

 nate me, like the picture of Cortes burning 

 Peruvians at the stake. 



Bless that time-honored old apple-worm 



picture! Originally "borrowed" from a 

 Government report some thirty years ago, 

 it still bobs up in new books on horticulture, 

 for nine-tenths of them are just as "jay" as 

 they ever were. 



But the other tenth — ah, what a goodly 

 change! Of course the half-tone pictures 

 have made a world of difference, but I be- 

 lieve the "gardening novels" had a good deal 

 to do with it. "Elizabeth and Her German 

 Garden" set the fashion, and started a host 

 of feeble imitators. It is still worth having 

 although it doesn't ring quite true, and of 

 course there is nothing about gardening in it. 

 The "Garden of a Commuter's Wife" is 

 infinitely better. It has a real message for 

 Americans, and the gardening element is 

 actually visible to the naked eye. (I wish 

 some one would give it to me this Christmas. 

 I've given away all the copies of it I can afford. 

 I love that book.) 



The point about such books as "Elizabeth" 

 and "The Commuter's Wife" is that they 

 help to create a race of gardeners. Also, 

 they make possible such books as Mrs. Ely's 

 "A Woman's Hardy Garden" — a type long 

 familiar in England, but not here, viz., a 

 book of personal experience by a skilled 

 amateur which is practical, illustrated from 

 photographs, and attractive enough for a 

 Christmas present. 



TWO MEN OF GENIUS 



There were a lot of mighty good books on 

 gardening in the eighteenth century, but I 

 shall not mention them, because they belong 

 to the pre-scientific era and because you have 

 to pick them up in antique book stores. The 

 229 



first American horticulturist of real genius- 

 was Andrew Jackson Downing, whose un- 

 timely death will always be a sorrow. He 

 gave the first great impulse toward beautiful 

 country homes in America, and his "Fruits 

 and Fruit Trees of America," as revised by 

 his brother Charles, is still the monumental 

 work on varieties, though of course the 

 cultural information is out of date. 



After Downing came the Middle Ages. 

 Every time I see the shoddy books of that 

 period on my shelves I wince. Nine-tenths 

 of the world's gardening books are merely 

 parasites; they simply follow a popular 

 interest already existent. But Downing 

 really moved the whole nation. And another 

 great creative force was old Peter Henderson 

 — bless his heart! His "Gardening for 

 Profit" undoubtedly molded thousands of 

 lives. It induced hundreds of returning 

 soldiers to go into market gardening after 

 the Civil War. Many a success can be 

 traced to the hope, hustle and rugged horse- 

 sense in that grim old book. I thrill over it 

 to-day. A quarter of a million copies of it 

 have been sold — a record which is probably 

 unparalleled. 



I am surprised to learn, too, that Hender- 

 son's "Gardening for Pleasure" exercised a 

 similar influence upon amateurs; that the book 

 is as stable a seller to-day as English consols, 

 and that, too, wholly independent of the efforts 

 of the seed-firm founded by the author. This 

 curious fact is eloquent of the conservatism 

 of the backwoods element, for the book has 

 all the crudities of the wood-cut era. 



Nearly all of Peter Henderson's contem- 

 poraries who wrote on practical gardening 



