BOOKS FOR THE HOME BUILDE 
AMER PINDAR 
®INCE 
JM 
'every garden 
means a home,” in¬ 
versely with equal jus¬ 
tice, every home pre¬ 
sumably presupposes a garden 
—certainly this is, or should be, true of every dwelling with a 
few spare feet of blessed mother earth about its toes. And 
those of us who are making homes for ourselves will be glad of 
this trio of recently published books with their helpful sugges¬ 
tion for indoors and out. 
Small Houses (Doubleday, Page & Co.) by Gilbert Murtagh. 
Outlining ways of making the little houseof moderate price (i.e. from 
$5,000 to $20,000) livable and complete; with forty full-page plans and 
sketches including designs for garages, mantels, doorways, and other 
interior and exterior details. 
Design in the Litte Garden (Atlantic Monthly Press) by Fletcher 
Steele. 
“One more of those rungs of the tentative ladder to beauty in the 
small garden, on which it is hoped that many will set foot.” Thus does 
Mrs. Francis King, in her foreword, delightfully epitomize this fourth of 
the Little Garden Series to appear under her editorship, a constructive 
and authoritative contribution by a Fellow of the American Society 
of Landscape Architects with much practical experience behind him. 
The Book of Gardens and Gardening (Doubleday, Page & Co.) 
edited by Reginald T. Townsend. 
“Visiting gardens by proxy has ever been a delight to the real gar¬ 
dener who finds in it an opportunity to give vent to his own imaginative 
desires in interpreting the pictures.” Says Mr. Barron in his illuminat¬ 
ing preface. “The garden must ever be a personal thing, if it is to have 
reality. And so the garden lover may draw inspiration and also 
practical instruction from these pages both of which will be readapted 
to fit a personal and peculiar problem that is his own.” 
For Everybody's Bookshelf 
A Manual of Cultivated Plants (Macmillan Co.) bv L. H. Bailey. 
Doctor Bailey has done for plants of the garden what Asa Gray long 
ago did for plants of the field and we cannot be too grateful for the 
patience, expenditure of time, energy, and wisdom which have produced 
this manual of “plants grown in the United States and Canada for food, 
ornament, utility, and general interest, both in the open and under 
glass.” It is an indispensable storehouse of enlightenment and a unique 
accomplishment—the first book of its kind not in America alone but in 
any country—by all means make room for it on your garden bookshelf! 
In the Flower Garden 
The Practical Book of Outdoor Flowers (J. B. Lippincott Co.) 
by Richardson IVright. 
A new book by Mr. Wright is like meeting an old friend in holiday 
garb—he has an inimitable way of investing commonplaces with per¬ 
sonality and sparkle. Gardening is an old art transformed by his wit 
and his zest into the freshest of pastimes. It is good reading too, and 
worth while from every viewpoint—you will learn without labor, pro¬ 
fiting by the fulness of another’s experience. 
A Garden Bluebook of Annuals and Biennials (Doubleday, Page 
& Co.) by Henry Stuart Ortloff. 
Flower Growing, The Amateur’s Book of the Garden Series 
(Doubleday, Page & Co.) Revised and adapted from the text of 
I. M. Bennett’s “The Flower Garden” by Leonard Barron. 
Lighter in physical bulk and in literary quality than Mr. Wright’s 
volume listed above, these are a serviceable pair nevertheless for the 
man or the woman who does not care to dig so deeply either into pocket 
or the world of plants. Lots of us like to garden simply, to get our 
knowledge easily, and for the amateur who wants flowers and more 
flowers, plenty of bloom under average conditions these two books point 
a clear and expeditious way. 
If You Are Keen About Roses 
The American Rose Annual for 1924 (American Rose Society) 
edited by J. Horace McFarland. 
Packed tight with information and inspiration, widely diversified in 
subject matter and treatment, the 
triumphal advance of the Rose dur¬ 
ing 1923 in Florida, Colorado, New 
Mexico, China, Australia, every¬ 
where! Do you want to learn 
about the 138 “New Roses of All the World”? Or how an old house¬ 
hold remedy is turned to new uses—“Bicarbonate of Soda Spray 
Effective”? These are only two of some half-hundred titles no lover 
of Roses can afford to miss! 
Roses for All American Climates (Macmillan Co.) by George C. 
Thomas, Jr. 
Whether you live in California or the hotter inland zones or on the 
damp salt-swept Atlantic coast there are Roses which will flourish for 
you. The varying response of more than 500 varieties to divergent 
climatic and soil conditions in the different regions has been studied 
and is here recorded by Mr. Thomas ina unique presentation which lifts 
the whole matter of Rose growing out of the realm of the problematical 
into certain success. 
Roses and How to Grow Them, The Amateur’s Book of the Garden 
Series (Doubleday, Page & Co.), revised by J. Horace McFarland. 
Especially written to meet the needs of the amateur who is growing 
Roses out of doors in his own garden and supplying up-to-the-minute 
data on all phases of Rose culture—the gist of a wide experience in 
concentrated form which will help the individual gardener to a maximum 
of achievement with a minimum of effort. 
Concerning the Esthetics 
Man’s Spiritual Contact With the Landscape (Richard G. 
Badger) by Stephen F. Hamblin. 
“The joy of a garden is a state of mind and a point of view toward 
life, rather than a question of a few plants and their arrangement. . . . 
The great danger to-day is that with our increased knowledge of the 
substance of things there will come a disregard of their spirit.” Mr. 
Hamblin speaks with force and feeling and frequently with beauty 
born of a poetic insight into the fundamental kinship of all living things 
and the sustenance afforded the soul as well as the body of man by his 
contact with the green earth. The remarkable supplementary biblio¬ 
graphy of nature verse and prose is a feast in itself and well worth 
leisurely digestion. 
Garden Grace (Macmillan Co.) by Louise Driscoll. 
Songs Out of Doors (Charles Scribner’s Sons) by Henry Van Dyke. 
Gardens are like harps through which the seasons pass in music: gay 
tunes, grave tunes, color, scent, the sound of winds singing in the trees 
-—you who love these things will joy to find them living again on the 
pages of Miss Driscoll’s book and will follow them out beyond gardens 
into the freer spaces of which Dr. Van Dyke sings. 
The Art of Colour (Doubleday, Page & Co.) by Michel Jacobs. 
Colour is not just an isolated phenomenon or a topic for trivial 
afternoon discussion; it is an elemental essence in all forms of life, it has 
power over the spirit: it may bring healing, induce cheer or gloom. 
To-day’s talk of “colour therapeutics” is not mere theorizing chatter— 
it is established fact. The chapters on Colour as Applied to Landscape 
Gardening and Colour as Applied to Cut Flowers, will appeal particu¬ 
larly to-gardeners though there is no part of the volume that any one 
interested in colour would care to miss. Its half-hundred colour plates 
and illuminating comment on batik, stage lighting, costume design, 
landscape painting, etc., hold considerable stimulation for student, 
craftsman, and artist. 
Of Recent Reprints 
Gardening By Myself (Duffield & Co.) by Anna B. Warner. 
The Garden of a Commuter’s Wife (Macmillan Co.) by Mabel 
Osgood Wright. 
Nut Growing (Macmillan Co.) by Robert T. Morris. 
To survive and make a second bow is something of an achievement 
considering the extraordinary stream of yearly printed matter, and any 
book may pat itself on the back, as it were, for accomplishing the feat. 
A reprint among garden books usually implies not only telling folks 
things that they still want to know about but telling them in a pleas¬ 
anter way than common, and the reader will not be disappointed in this 
trio of recent reappearances. 
538 
