SUCH A FRIENDLY LITTLE GARDEN! 
HELEN HART OAKES 
8o x 50 Feet Chock-a-block with All the Joys of Bagdad 
M^HEN I read Thoreau’s 
“Walden/’ as 1 often 
fMm do, there is a little diver- 
N&m sion I engage in which 
is to be recommended to those 
who wish to renew the charm of 
the first readingof a particularly 
delightful book. I pretend that 
1 have never read it before, and 
always there is the same pleased 
surprise when I reach these 
beautiful words: 
• “ The morning wind forever 
blows, the poem of creation is 
uninterrupted; but few are the 
ears that hear it. Olympus is 
but the outside of the earth 
everywhere.” 
If 1 never had had a garden 
and read those lines I should go 
out straightway and begin to 
dig. With a morning wind for¬ 
ever blowing it is never too late 
to plant a garden; even in winter 
there are the seed and llower 
catalogues and January garden¬ 
ing is a jocund pastime. 
Those writing of gardens are 
to be envied who can tell their 
readers just how to make paths, 
what plants to use under all 
conditions, and what soil and 
fertilizers are best. I can not do 
that. The only point 1 hope to 
make is that if one cares enough 
for flowers to plant and tend a 
garden it is almost certain that, 
in spite of mistakes, one will be 
rewarded by beauty and enjoy¬ 
ment. Gardens are like children 
in that if one loves them enough 
and in the right way it is diffi¬ 
cult to spoil them. A garden 
allowed to run wild might be¬ 
come a tangle of Hollyhocks, 
Matricaria, and Daisies, which I warrant would survive every¬ 
thing else, but it would still have much beauty. 
Armies of skilled gardeners and their adequate hothouses have 
produced something very near perfection in the way of beautiful 
gardens. But one would hesitate to uptilt the piquant face of 
a Pansy or lay a caressing finger upon a Rose growing there and 
the coldly artistic marble seats do not look inviting. One feels 
that only stately and tall ladies should tread those sodded paths 
and that they should be accompanied by gracefully emaciated 
greyhounds or by peacocks with plumage always spread Re¬ 
display. For there is an austerity about any formal garden 
arrangement and even the so-called “informal” corners of fine 
large gardens often seem calculated. So the flower lover with 
scant room and means need not be discouraged after visits to 
these gardens, for in their exquisite perfection they have lost 
something of the intimate charm which is a part of the small 
garden planted by the owner who has placed each seed and plant 
with a caress. 
Besides, perfection is such a disappointing thing, bringing one 
269 
up against a wall and leaving 
nothing to do. One small gar¬ 
den promises to be the means 
of keeping me happily occupied 
for the rest of my life—there 
is so much to learn and to do in 
that friendly little garden, child 
of my nimble fancies and bung¬ 
ling fingers, but where the plants 
and I are good friends in spite 
of my many mistakes, some of 
which, in the beginning, were 
disastrous to them! I am sure 
they laughed, with my f amily, 
at the result of the planfng I 
did on a windy day—everyihing 
came up where something else 
had been planted. Then, one 
April there must have been 
strong north winds, for all the 
Bachelors’-buttons came up out 
in the unpaved street which ran 
along the south side of the gar¬ 
den. Once where 1 had planted 
the seed of Oriental Poppies 
there sprang up a cluster of 
Muskmelons; and, because they 
are hirsute plants, too, the seed¬ 
lings grew to be quite large be¬ 
fore their unconscious decep¬ 
tion was discovered. 
1 fancy that the flowers crane 
their stems to watch the coming 
and going of the rag, paper, and 
old clothes men, for they must 
know by this time that all the 
nickels and dimes wrested from 
those hard-fisted autocrats go 
into the fund for new fertilizers, 
a particularly appropriate ar¬ 
rangement, it seems to me. A 
red-letter day it was when an 
honest, or absent-minded junk 
man paid me the unexpected 
sum of nine dollars and a half 
for an attic full of old books and magazines. This was an event 
of importance which must be celebrated by a special purchase, 
something that would stand as a sort of milestone in the garden 
traditions. So this sum was diverted from the fertilizer fund 
and after I had fingered the leaves of catalogues until their edges 
were fringed, and had felt like a child with a penny trying to 
choose among the riches of a candy store, Lily bulbs were de¬ 
cided upon and the lily beds begun with a small collection of 
Madonna and rubrum Lilies. 
F IF TEEN years ago when the garden was started it was laid 
out with a path meandering along about six feet inside 
the edges of the eighty by fifty foot space. It would be hard to 
enumerate the different materials of which this path is composed; 
1 believe it started with fine crushed stone, but since then it has 
had additions of cinders, gravel, and brick, and once a cement 
mixture was poured over it, and it bears a trace of each material. 
It is still not much of a path; it is the abiding place of stray 
seedlings which persist, some of them, in doing better there 
A GATEWAY OF THE “ FRIENDLY LITTLE GARDEN” 
Where " all the short paths are of irregular stepping-stones: these require much 
time for clipping hut their beauty warrants it, for wild Violets and English 
Daisies spring up all about them.” At Mrs. Oakes' home, Maywood, Illinois 
