Book Reviews 
*The Complete Garden. Doubleday, Page & Co., Publishers. 
By Albert D. Taylor, M.S.A. 
Dangers beset the beginner in gardening: The greatest one 
because of the disposition of the average person to resent suggestion 
or advice, the acceptance of which might seem to involve a sur- 
render of one's originality in so simple a matter as making a garden; 
another, in the readiness of many people to yield to the blandish- 
ments of the nursery salesman, and to accept from him a crude, but 
to the uninitiated, enticing planting scheme, furnished without charge, 
which too often involves a heavy outlay for an unfit scheme and a 
mass of useless and improper planting material. 
In the "The Complete Garden," Albert D. Taylor, the author, 
states as the object of his book that "it is hoped that this book will 
serve as a ready reference to those who have no authoritative source 
of information, and whose hmited opportunity and limited time for 
observation have not enabled them to become familiar with a wide 
range of material and to keep famiUar with it. This separate informa- 
tion is not compiled for the purpose of taking the place of the 
services of the professional landscape architect, where the problem 
is of sufficient magnitude to justify his employment. This book will 
assist those, who, having no available information at hand, are prone 
to accept the advice of landscape quacks and self-styled landscape 
architects with Httle training." 
And further along he says, "This book will be placed at the dis- 
posal of such persons to Hst all plants from which species and varieties 
may be selected advisably." He also promises help in the "correct 
selection of plants for various purposes in landscape work, the cor- 
rect use of plants, their landscape value, and how to plant and main- 
tain them. " 
The author has more than fulfilled this promise, and has pro- 
duced a book so comprehensive in scope and authoritative in method 
as to displace whole hbraries of so-called Gardening Books, com- 
bining as it does the simple elemental information of the Seed Cata- 
logue, with the more advanced and scientific instruction and advice 
so valuable to the more experienced planter, and with its funds of 
information as to the selection of material, plants, planting methods, 
arrangements of gardens, remedies for pests, street planting, etc., it 
furnishes a complete guide and manual with which the average person 
may make and maintain a most satisfying, tasteful and beautiful 
garden, and avoid the mistakes which discourage and dishearten. 
The book ought to be in every Public Library and in the office 
of every municipal manager, and on the shelves of all owners of gar- 
* Star is mark of excellence. 
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