2 



MANUAL OF GARDENING 



We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but 

 we are happier when we love the things that 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 sup- 

 pressed. The man who worries morning and night about the 

 dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dande- 

 lions. Each blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it 

 shines in the exuberant sunlight of the growing spring, and 

 attracts the insects to its bosom. Little children like the dan- 

 delions: why may not we? Love the things nearest at hand; 

 and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the gate 

 of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said 

 to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market, ''How much 

 there is in the world that I do not want !" 



I verily believe that this paragraph I have just written is 

 worth more than all the advice with which I intend to cram the 

 succeeding pages, notwithstanding the fact that I have most 

 assiduously extracted this advice from various worthy but, 

 happily, long-forgotten authors. Happiness is a quality of 

 a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the anticipation of 

 joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so many 

 books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all 

 these books have been good and useful. It would be ungrate- 

 ful, at the least, for the present writer to say otherwise; but 

 books grow old, and the advice becomes too familiar. The 

 sentences need to be transposed and the order of the chapters 

 varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or, to speak plainly, 

 a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in everj^ decade, 

 or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There 

 has been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks, — 

 Gardiner & Hepburn, M'Mahon, Cobbett — original, pungent, 

 versatile Cobbett ! — Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers, 



