20 
House' & Garden 
garden close until the cool rains of evening 
raise it again. Then in autumn, the flame of 
tree and bush, and Nature is mightily con¬ 
sumed on her pyre, like some old Indian queen 
majestically sorrowful in her suttee. These 
things, I say, are fair to look upon, and a man 
is a better man for having seen them. But if 
he never raises his eyes, much there is he 
misses. 
For a garden is more than stem and blossom 
and brown earth. It is infinitely greater than 
anything you can create with diligent labor. 
In the huge mosaic of the countryside it may 
be only a small piece, but it shares the glory 
and the wonder of everything abput it. To 
see these is one of the compensations of gar¬ 
dening and, oddly enough, they mean more to 
the gardener than to anyone else because he 
understands them. 
For moments now he has been busily en¬ 
grossed with spade and hoe, the earth yielding 
readily to his skill as he shapes the tender 
seedlings into a seemly row against their day 
of growth. Then he straightens up to stretch 
his tired muscles—and a vision of great activ¬ 
ity is vouchsafed him. Bird choirs sing in 
the clerestory of the trees. Toward the horizon 
the tawny checkerboard fields spill merrily over 
the hilltop. Far above, the streets of the sky 
are peopled with cloud denizens. For a mo¬ 
ment he is bewildered by the gigantic puissance 
of it all; then, gradually, he realizes that in 
looking up he has beheld the face of a new 
world. And when he turns to the flowers at 
his feet, they are lovelier for the contrast: del¬ 
phiniums are bluer for that sky, and phlox 
whiter for the clouds and the brown earth more 
golden for those tawny fields on the hilltop 
over there. 
D uring the past three years great num¬ 
bers of the American people have been 
obliged to garden. The stern necessity of war 
made it incumbent upon them to raise their 
own vegetables. This year that necessity is 
somewhat mitigated. And in removing the 
stern purpose from gardening there is oppor¬ 
tunity for other objects to be attained. Is it 
conceivable that these three years of initiation 
shall not have made many a confirmed gar¬ 
dener out of an amateur ? Is it not possible to 
hope that they will now garden because of the 
unalloyed joy it brings and the cleansing con¬ 
tact with another world? Can we not also 
trust that they will grow flowers with the same 
enthusiasm as they have grown vegetables? 
Yes, it is a fairly safe wager that those who 
have learned to work in their gardens, who 
have been ennobled by looking at them, will 
now turn to them as a means whereby they 
can look up. For the great reward of garden¬ 
ing is that we are gathered along in Nature’s 
upward swirl and carried above the ordinary 
things of everyday life. 
The gardener should be able to take more 
from his plot than a crop of flowers and 
freckles, succulent vegetables and hard mus¬ 
cles. If that is all he expects, he will get even 
less than his expectation. Nature is a jealous 
goddess and she demands that appreciation go 
with culture. The heart must work with the 
hoe. Aspirations must exude with good, hon¬ 
est sweat. There must always be that vision of 
blue sky above and tawny fields on the hilltop. 
These are things that set a man to dream¬ 
ing, and he is big or small, vital or inconse¬ 
quential, comprehending or dullard according 
to the measure of his dreams. He is also a 
successful gardener according to the measure 
of his dreams. Nature requires sympathie, an 
understanding of her ways. 
N ot all gardeners understand Nature be¬ 
cause not all permit themselves this sym¬ 
pathy. Their purpose in gardening is such 
that it limits their capacity for dreams, for 
hoeing with the heart. 
Some people make a garden because it is the 
fashionable thing to do. And they have them¬ 
selves photographed for the magazines and 
Sunday supplements, in their gardens, wearing 
jewels and the smartest garden clothes—where¬ 
upon all the little birds in the tree tops there¬ 
about set up unconstrained laughter and the 
workman on the East Side vows to vote the 
Socialist ticket at the next election. 
Other people take gardening as they would 
a narcotic—the way some men take work—to 
make themselves forget. Which is a futile at¬ 
tempt, because to maintain the stimulus for 
oblivion they must increase the dose, and they 
eventually reach a point where they are not 
capable of increasing it. 
Still others make gardens because it is part 
of a full life. To live happily they must in¬ 
vest their hours and aspirations in the activities 
of another world. And they draw the interest 
of pleasure according to the measure of their 
investment. They are usually quaint folk, 
other-worldly in their manner, but capable of 
comprehending the idiosyncrasies of Nature as 
she displays them in tree and bush and fra¬ 
grant blossom, across the skyline and in the 
infinite zenith. These are, moreover, the suc¬ 
cessful gardeners. 
Let’s look into this class of gardeners for a 
moment—and then quit. 
S OME people are referred to as “born gar¬ 
deners.” They aren’t necessarily scientific 
folk or intellectual—quite the opposite in most 
cases—but they seem to have a knack for mak¬ 
ing plants grow. Others may spend money 
freely for fine tools and chemicals and espe¬ 
cially selected seeds, and have no luck at all, 
whereas, some poor little old woman in the 
back street, who cannot afford all these luxu¬ 
ries, puts their gardens to shame. 
What’s the answer? 
The little old woman, like as not, raises her 
flowers the same way she raises her babies. 
She does it herself. It is part of the day’s 
work. Upon her own energies depends the ap¬ 
pearance of that front yard. She doesn’t lay 
off because the sun is hot, and she hasn’t any 
gardeners to hand the work over to when it 
grows irksome. She doesn’t garden because it 
is the fashion, but because flowers are pretty 
things to have about the place, and because 
her man and her children enjoy fresh vegeta¬ 
bles. They are a vital part of her everyday life. 
But that is only one reason. The other you 
will discover when you get to know her well— 
which may not be so easy. True gardeners, 
like true fishermen, are a clannish lot; they 
stolidly refuse to tell their secrets. But say 
you do get to know her well and start her on 
the subject of flowers and vegetables, she will 
begin to talk about them in the most amazing 
fashion—familiarly, poetically, like the lover 
in the Song of Solomon, with quaint observa¬ 
tions that open doors to worlds of deep under¬ 
standing. And midway in her conversation— 
this happens invariably and to it is due much 
of her success—she will stop and look up lov¬ 
ingly at some fluffy little cloud drifting across 
the sky, or listen to the call of a bird, or let 
her eyes rest understandingly on the horizon 
where the tawny checkerboard fields spill over 
the hilltop. 
