THE GARDEN BOOKSHELF UP-TO-DATE 
A Group of Recent Books Compassing the Needs of Beginner and Con¬ 
noisseur —Simplifying your Christmas Shopping for Gardening Friends 
S ARDEN literature obviously has not the almost limit- 
■ less possibilities of variation inherent in the field of 
’ pure fiction; practicality and a strict allegiance to fact 
w "t/wii build a fence around the imagination, sharply defining 
the area within which the writer on gardening may safely stray. 
In consequence, though books on landscape architecture, flowers, 
trees, fruits, sun-dials, and kindred subjects are constantly mak¬ 
ing their way to public notice, of these comparatively few con¬ 
tribute anything new or noteworthy. Literally thousands of 
folk garden lovingly, but almost none garden constructively 
—most of us being content to follow the findings of the other 
fellow and too busy or too indolent to investigate on our account. 
Occasionally crops up some sharp-minded individual who 
turns the white light of intelligence on the obscurer phases of 
gardening and we get an illuminating achievement like Dr. 
Robert T. Morris’s “Nut Growing” (Macmillan) which has 
simplified greatly the difficult and uncertain art of grafting nut 
trees. Occasionally, too, the fancy seizes some writer blessed 
with a nimble pen to set down the soul stirrings awak¬ 
ened by personal contact with flowers, and sunrise breezes, and 
good brown earth—then comes a bit of genuinely pleasant read¬ 
ing like “Truly Rural” (Richardson Wright, published by 
Houghton Mifflin, 1922.) These two books serve to epitomize 
the situation in general and our purpose in regard to it—unless 
a book contain fresh information or old facts so freshly pre¬ 
sented as to have manifest appeal, its claims seem too slight to 
justify special presentation, and so of the ever mounting pile 
of volumes only a handful of “aces” are chosen. 
For the Virtuoso 
Landscape Art Past and Present (Scribner’s) by Harriet Ham¬ 
mond McCormick. 
Beautiful in form and in content is this limited edition book by one 
of the founders of The Garden Club of America. “Gardening as a fine 
art she believed in and encouraged; and Walden stands to-day in its 
calm beauty a token of this belief, of this delight in gardens.” So says 
Mrs. Francis King in her sympathetic preface to Mrs. McCormick’s 
masterly essay which somehow manages in a brief thirty pages to com¬ 
pact the whole story of landscape art, its significance and “its high 
goal”—a progress expressively pictured in the fifty-odd delightful 
accompanying photogravures of gardens of many lands and eras. 
Forty Years of Landscape Architecture (Putnam’s) Frederick 
Law Olmsted, Sr.—Early Years and Experiences—Edited by Fred¬ 
erick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Theodora Kimball. 
An arresting revelation—despite its somewhat eccentric and aggra¬ 
vating manner of presentation—of a great figure in early American 
landscape art; a man whose eyes looked beyond his own day and to 
whom the American public owed a debt of which it is as yet scarcely 
aware; whose life left its impress on nearly every big city from Boston to 
San Erancisco and on universities as widely separated as Harvard and 
Leland-Stanford; a creator of parks and, praises be! politicians go but 
parks remain. 
For Everyman’s Shelf 
Variety In the Little Garden (Atlantic Monthly Press) by Mrs. 
Fraud■: King. There is something irresistibly friendly and appealing 
about the physical get-up of “ The Little Garden Series” which impels 
the susceptible gardener at once toward ownership—a pleasant promise 
fulfilled for Mrs. King, that “great organizer for the good of the gardens 
of the land,” is able to clothe her enthusiasm in fitting literary raiment 
—a faculty not always given to gardeners. Readers of “The Little 
Garden,” the first of the series, will welcome this companion volume. 
Principles of Flower Arrangement (A. T. De La Mare) by 
Edward A. White, Prof, of Horticulture, Cornell University. 
Flower arrangement as an art is, in company with other arts both 
lesser and greater, just now emerging from a period of confused arti¬ 
ficiality which seems the inevitable intermediate between pure primi¬ 
tive taste and a truly trained discrimination, so that Prof. White’s 
contribution comes with all the force of timeliness. It is not a book for 
the man who reads as he runs, it is a book demanding leisure and quiet 
consideration. Garden clubs will find it a valuable basis for discussion 
as it goes very thoroughly into fundamentals of color, form, harmony, 
and the many niceties of artistic perception. Nor have the “profes¬ 
sional” phases of the subject been ignored—there is excellent practical 
direction as to the cutting and keeping of flowers, the selection of vases, 
together with comprehensive lists of garden and greenhouse flowers for 
decoration, foliage plants, etc. 
Flowers for Cutting and Decoration (E. P. Dutton & Co.) by 
Richardson Wright. 
Beneath the surface ebulliency characteristic of this facile pen are 
found much common sense, genuine knowledge and feeling, interlarded, 
to be sure, with a flippancy sometimes disconcerting and a whimsicality 
frequently delightful. “The first rule in gardening etiquette: that the 
flowers should be cut by those who raise them” at once wins applause, 
and the busy housewife who has little time for reflection but much de¬ 
sire for perfection is enabled to pick a great many plums in a very 
short while. Chapter eleven, for example, deals not only with “Bou¬ 
quets for Spring, Summer, and Autumn” but suggests arrangements, 
suitable and piquant, for desk, dining-table, and bureau. 
Plant Names (Macmillan) by T. S. Lindsay, B. D. 
In this lucid and sparkling small volume the Archdeacon of Dublin 
makes evident the “rhyme and reason” of plant nomenclature, lifting 
an ordinarily dry-as-dust subject not only out of confusion but actually 
into the realm of entertainment for any one keen about the origins of 
things. 
For the Specialist 
Adventures in My Garden and Rock Garden (Doubleday, Page 
& Co.) by Louise Beebe Wilder. 
With her flair for the exceptional and precious among plants and 
many years of affectionate patience in their growing, Mrs. Wilder comes 
well equipped to her story which is told with the charm and spontaneity 
so characteristic of all her writings. An accurate record and acute 
estimate of many little known flowers based on personal familiarity 
with their failings and their fascinations, and in this book the reader 
finds for the first time a comprehensive catalogue of rockery plants by 
this leading exponent of a type of gardening daily strengthening its 
hold on the hearts of American gardeners. 
How To Grow Roses (Conard & Jones) by Robert Pyle. 
As President of The American Rose Society Mr. Pyle enjoys super¬ 
lative opportunity to know Roses, both intimately and in a large way, a 
knowledge again generously put at the disposal of all Rose lovers in this 
revised and enlarged edition, the fourteenth, of his handbook. Chap¬ 
ter X, The Best Roses for America, 157 Varieties; and Chapter XI, 
Selections by Experts for Special Sections, hold some very special 
thrills, and among the “experts” we find such names as that of Dr. 
Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum, Chas. E. F. Gersdorfif, Mrs. Aaron 
Ward, and W. C. Egan. Established favorites like the Duchess of 
Wellington, Radiance, Paul’s Scarlet Climber, and Silver Moon appear 
in color as does the lesser known but oncoming Rosa Hugonis and some 
dozen others. A compact, readily handled volume, absolutely indis¬ 
pensable to the serious grower and infused with all the vigorous fervor 
of a genuine lover of this old, old flower of song. 
Peonies In The Little Garden (Atlantic Monthly Press) by Mrs. 
Edward Harding. 
“ Had I but four square feet of ground at my disposal, I would plant 
a Peony in the centre and proceed to worship.” Such is Mrs. Harding’s 
own expression of her enthusiasm for a flower lately adopted as the 
civic emblem of Winnipeg. And after reading this book, the third in 
“The Little Garden Series” appearing under the general editorship of 
Mrs. Francis King, we feel that Mrs. King has not at all overstated its 
merits when she says: “Mrs. Harding’s thorough knowledge of the 
Peony from long growing and observation in her own garden, her criti¬ 
cal taste, and her fine and lively style of writing [already familiar 
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