S:\IALL GARDENS 



to weeds, or to the accumulation of rubbish 

 of one kind or another, and they will detract 

 from the tidy and clean appearance which 

 should characterize the home everwhere. 

 If the ovrners of these bits of ground — these 

 possibilities for adding to the attractiveness 

 of home — could be made to realize the amount 

 of pleasure they could be made to afford with 

 very little exertion on their part, the general 

 work of civic improvement societies would 

 be most beneficial, and this would be done 

 at the very place where civic improvement 

 ought to start — the home. There can be 

 no real and lasting improvement in civic 

 undertaking unless the individual home takes 

 up the matter. The civic improvement 

 society that starts out with the idea of im- 

 proving things generalh^, but does not begin 

 the good work at the home is working on the 

 idea of making clean the outside of the cup 

 and ignoring the condition inside it. Just 

 as the home is the foundation of society, so 

 must it be made the pivotal point at which 

 any substantial and lasting improvement 

 finds its beginning. 



Because the scattered places about the 

 small home in which few plants could be 

 grown will not admit of bed-making, or the 



designs'' which many persons seem to think 

 77 



