Marcu, 1908 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
5. Awild garden beside woods and Jake such as anyone may have on $10 an 
acre land in New England 
or memorandum book, verifying descriptions 
and noting dates of bloom. And as to 
cutting—you don’t allow your own wife to 
cut the first blooms of a Madame de Graaff 
narcissus (at $7.50 per dozen) even if she 
did give you Kirby’s “ Daffodils” for Christ- 
mas. The best kind of garden for a collector 
is one in which every plant is labeled or else 
set in beds of unit size so that a chart 
quickly reveals the identity of each variety. 
This, then, is the psychology of flower 
gardening. But the lessons to be deduced 
from it by wealthy people and by people 
of moderate means are exactly opposite. 
The average person does not specialize 
enough; rich Americans specialize too much. 
The average man can make his garden more 
interesting . by asking himself which one 
of those four attitudes of mind best fits his 
personality. That question being honestly 
answered, the sure way to success and the 
truest economy is to specialize along one line. 
On the other hand, the wealthy Americans 
who devote the most time and money to 
gardening usually let their hobbies run away 
7. Anew Kind of winter garden with a real lawn to walk on and birds flying 
about, instead of a conventional greenhouse 
6. A hardy border of perennial flowers makes a simpler and better garden for 
most people than formal flower beds 
with them. For instance, where is there a 
good general collection of plants near New 
York city? The gentlemen who compose 
the council of the Horticultural Society of 
New York raised this question the other day 
but were unable to answer it. They couldn’t 
think of any well-balanced estate like those 
of the late Mr. George Such at Perth Amboy, 
N. J., or the late Mr. Hicks Arnold at Rye, 
N. Y. A famous estate at Madison, N. J., 
sacrifices everything to six weeks of spring 
bloom. Newport concentrates on July and 
August effects; Lenox on September; the 
Southern resorts only on the winter months. 
Every man has several establishments for 
special seasons and no real home. 
Even the men that call themselves collect- 
ors rarely have a good general collection. 
There are a few orchid collections that are 
representatives of the whole family, but plenty 
of people grow nothing but Cattleya labiata 
and its varieties. There are many rose 
gardens, but they generally grow H. P’s. or 
teas and neglect the other classes. Ten to 
one an “iris collector’ cares for nothing 
but the Japs and Germans. A “‘tulip 
fancier” will neglect either the earliest or the 
latest, and certainly the “ botanical” species. 
The trouble is that we have the “defects 
of our virtues.” We follow the spirit of 
our century too hard. Specialties are all 
right, but not if we follow them exclusively. 
Then they become fads and we soon tire of 
them. What we need most is to conserve 
the best things that previous centuries have 
taught us. We need gardens that exist for 
special purposes, but are not too special. 
Out of hundreds of photographs I have 
selected a dozen which illustrate gardens 
of this kind. I hope these pictures will 
indicate how you can make a garden that 
will fulfill your greatest need without sacri- 
ficing the other things. For I believe that 
the author of “ The Formal Garden in Eng- 
land” has gone too far in saying that in this 
age of specializing we have lost that exquisite 
sense of proportion and fitness which every- 
body in the eighteenth century exercised 
intuitively. That sense of proportion still 
exists and here are the proofs of it. 
8. What finer place to rest than by this walk bordered with magnificent old 
flowering trees and shrubs? A northern city garden 
