Have we, in America, an unfortunate way of deciding what we 
want rather than what is suitable? Do we make our gardens as we 
would scorn to buy our hats? 
We insist that a hat be becoming, that it be our particular kind of 
a hat, but we think very little whether a garden becomes a house or 
a countryside or a climate. Some of us like Italian gardens, so we 
plant firmly, quite close to a clapboarded farm house,' a faltering 
excerpt from the shores of Lake Como. Or, from the wide portico 
of a colonial mansion, we drop our eyes to a small, vague Versailles. 
Or, again, a French chateau is surrounded by tangles of shrubbery 
and swoops of perennial border in what, we fondly hope, is the English 
style. 
A loved child, though plain, can always be made pleasing by quaint 
frocks and bonnets that would not suit a really beautiful little girl. 
This we all concede and comply with, but in decking our little plain 
houses, or our large imposing ones, we carry out a preconceived 
notion, ignoring the demands of suitability. 
The kindly English critic, whose letter follows, tells us this so 
gently and politely that we can but take it to heart and, hereafter, 
study our inclinations less and our conditions more. 
/? 
Letter from Miss Jekyll 
On Receiving a Copy of Miss Louise Shelton's 
"Beautiful Gardens in America" 
Mtjxstead Wood, Godalming, Surrey, England. 
Jan. 7, 1916. 
Dear Mrs. King: I am afraid you must have thought me ungrate- 
ful for not sooner thanking you for the beautiful and highly interest- 
ing volume on American gardens. I could not hurry with it; with my 
very bad and painful sight I could only take a few plates and pages at 
a time. 
It is good to see how seriously good gardening is being practised 
on your side and how neither pains nor cost are spared. If one may 
criticise it is only that in many cases there is too much ornamental 
detail crowded together, so that the eye is bewildered by too many 
objects of interest being in sight at the same time. For this reason 
the pictures that appeal to me most strongly are Chesterwood, 
Mariemont, Montpelier, Preston and the quiet canal at Blairsden. 
These have all the inestimable advantage of mature tree growth, 
either in main feature or background. 
