May, 1912 AMERICAN: HOMES AND” GARDENS XXV 
Wuat ENnctanp Can TEAcH Us ABOUT 
GARDENING. By Wilhelm Miller, Ph.D. 
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 
Page & Co., 1911. Cloth; quarto; illus- 
trated with 112 plates and eight plates in 
color; 18+359 pages. Price, $4.00 net. 
The book written by Wilhelm Miller 
bearing the title, “What England Can Teach 
Us About Gardening,’ is a comparative 
treatment of a subject which the author’s 
experience here and research abroad fits 
him fully for the task. In every way the 
contribution is a filippic to those seeking 
knowledge of English gardens and the 
methods of improving our own. The ob- 
jects of the book are too important, their 
presentation too ably sustained to warrant 
much notice of the author’s somewhat nim- 
ble use of slang and his severe strictures 
on those writers who gush in garden liter- 
ature. When this author does not care, he 
writes of “a plant that fails to do the job.” 
When writing in a fine strain, although he 
hints it is his reluctance, he repents and 
tells of “lace leaf and such deathless forms 
of beauty”; of “miniature isles of bloom 
that are perfect little poems”; of “the splen- 
dor of precious English Holly and Ivy that 
sinks into his soul.” Truly a range of ex- 
pressions that shows he can be both loose 
and pretty in style, while capable of the 
sober work he has done as an editor of the 
complete and massive volume of Bailey’s 
Cyclopedia of American Horticulture. The 
sections of the present large volume are 
here epitomized so as to represent the num- 
erous chapters of Part I as: ‘Noble and 
ignoble ideas in landscape, formal, wild, 
water, rock, wall, peat, rose and indoor gar- 
dening ; also hardy borders, collecting, mak- 
ing new varieties; and garden cities.” Part 
II as: “How we waste millions on materials 
we could never buy and on effects we can- 
not imitate; what the best English effects 
are and how we can reproduce the spirit 
of them with long-life material; and how 
we can contribute something toward that 
supreme goal. An American type of gar- 
dening.” In the twenty-six chapters and 
the appendix the treatment is admirable for 
its devotion to the subjects. He stays with 
the garden wall until it is covered with 
vines; with the pool until its water-lilies 
span fully nine inches across their leaves; 
and just as he finds that a certain moss has 
a “genius” for filling every crevice, has he 
the same faculty for filling every chink in 
the science of rock gardening, and the rest. 
A subtle touch of climate helps to make 
England the most exauisite garden in the 
world. The lack of this ingredient puts 
somewhat into shade the horticultural 
achievements of our land. In lieu of it we 
can materially improve by falling heir to 
the garden sense of a book which is full of 
the promise of a primrose future if we 
will stop imitating and use what is at hand 
for creating more and better gardens. To 
understand the right or the wrong way, to 
find the relations of form or schemes of 
color, in gardening, the reader is always 
referred to the numerous plates that illus- 
trate the text. So that if we cannot have 
all of the reticence and the delight of Eng- 
land in our gardens we can get much of it in 
these illustrations. The material for illustra- 
tions supplies nothing that can be called a 
makeshift of book embellishment, and the 
objects and scenes presented are a tribute to 
the sifting acumen of an expert’s selections 
in a work which is one of the best that have 
been written and pictured about England’s 
flowerbeds and evergreen foliage, her wild- 
flower, hedge and woodland glories, the 
lovely threading of her streams around, the 
incomparable nestling of her cottages, 
among such as these. 
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