50 
House Garden 
IN PRAISE OF THE LITTLE GARDEN 
Whether It Be a City Backyard or the Intimate Enclosure on a 
Country Place, to Love Such Beauty Is to Be Rich Itideed 
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 
I N England, that “precious stone set in the silver sea,” no house 
and grounds are too small but they afford room for some sort of 
garden; and it is not only among the well-conditioned that this 
beautiful idea flourishes and is carried out. Few are so poor that 
they will dispense with a garden—just as they will not dispense 
with tea. They would relinquish a room—indeed, a garden is more 
essential than a room could be, since it is a glamorous addition as 
well as a practical necessity—before they would relinquish a row 
of plants or the most modest little border of bulbs. 
Few of us save money, because we feel that we seldom have a 
sufficiently large sum to put away; and we think it hardly worth 
while to tuck five dollars, say, into the bank—we will wait for the 
golden day when we can deposit at least a hundred. But alas! that 
day never seems to come. Similarly, we think it rather absurd and 
futile to fuss over a patch of grass at the back of our city house. 
Some day we will have ten acres in the country—then wait and see! 
But somehow the ten dream-acres never materialize, and the single 
tree in our urban yard is allowed to languish, since it is not thought 
worth keeping up. 
But just as enthusiasm dwindles over little things, it increases 
amazingly, rolls slowly but surely toward compound interest, if 
we but give it the requisite start. The opulent garden of our 
neighbor often discourages us in our efforts with our own pitiful 
little foot of earth; we have a sense of false pride about our paucity 
of material, and feel that it would be foolhardy to dress up our 
hmited domain, perhaps hold us up to ridicule if we should plant 
lowly pansies when next door there is a riot of roses. 
T he English have no such silly inhibitions. A little dash of 
color at some suburban doorstep may be the connecting link 
between two glorious gardens on either side; may be the means, 
indeed, of completing a perfect pattern which you and I happily 
view from our motor or train—a pattern which would not exist 
except for the temerity of that modest middle fellow who is un¬ 
ashamed to add his bit to the substantial whole. Civic pride steps 
in, you see, in some communities; and upon its head may rest the 
blame for that wild and daring desire which is in most of us to 
possess a garden of our own. 
There is nothing that rewards the laborer more than the sudden 
magical appearance, some fine morning, of a burst of blue or scarlet 
flame out of the cold brown earth. Something mysteriously lovely 
happens to one’s soul at the sight of such magic; and I doubt if, 
in all history, there is record of a single serious crime having been 
committed by a gardener—or even by a city florist. I could under¬ 
stand a jeweler, handling gorgeous but cold emeralds and diamonds, 
taking it into his head to kill his enemy. Greed might be a compo¬ 
nent part of one dealing in precious stones; a certain hardness and 
bitterness and envy might easily come into the heart of such a man. 
The very chiseled perfection of a ruby might cause him to think in 
coldly polite chiseled phrases; and his deed of darkness would 
probably be done with skill and finesse. But a gardener—his hours 
are softly spent, and there is as much relation between him and a 
lapidary as there is between the old-fashioned country coachman, 
with a deathless love of horses, and the modern cruel-looking taxi- 
driver, just out of jail, plunging recklessly through our city streets. 
T he pity of life has always seemed to me to lie in that habit 
which most of us have of postponing our pleasures. We Ameri¬ 
cans, particularly, fear to seem to fail in any endeavor—as though 
there were some penalty attached to normal dreaming in a world 
that is money mad. We say that we will do so-and-so tomorrow— 
or when we can get around to it. I know at least twenty town 
people who talk fondly of farms and chickens and pigs, who are 
actually afraid to leave the beaten tracks of the city, lest they 
appear awkward and out of place in the country. They forget that 
the longer they delay their going to a bucolic paradise the less 
strength they will have to make the start; they do not realize that 
the years crowd out our dreams as well as our energy, and that the 
sunset over the hill is, in the twinkling of an eye, only a wonderful 
memory. 
The wise Thoreau once said that a few feet of earth were all one 
needed for complete happiness. No matter how rich we are, we 
can live in but one house at a time, and drink only so many cups 
of coffee with our breakfast. What is the need, then, of piling 
on extravagance and luxury? What does a millionaire know of the 
delight, looking down on his formal Italian garden, with its pools 
and ghostly statues, of the poor man digging with his own hands in 
the soil of his two-by-four front yard? 
I have seen a whole long dingy street illuminated and glorified 
by one little flower box on a window sill, just as I have known a 
plain countenance to take on loveliness through the faintest of 
smiles. Thomas Campion’s line, “There is a garden in her face,” 
is not an exaggeration. No beautiful statement ever more com¬ 
pletely won the hearts of human beings; and when that most 
graceful of poets, Robert Herrick, gave the world his singing creed, 
he said that he would chant 
“Of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers. 
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.” 
And always, through his delicate lyrics, runs that thread of flowery 
rhyme; that perpetual stress is there of the wonder of gardens and 
meadows and bees and kine—all the beautifully simple things 
which go to make life lovelier and sweeter. 
A thing does not have to be big to be important; indeed, often, 
if not always, the smallest of our possessions are those we love the 
most. A mere handful of love-songs is all Burns bequeathed to us; 
yet who would exchange them for a Solomon’s temple packed with 
kingly pride? And rather than the vast ocean, I would prefer 
that tiny pool, so dear to Yeats, “too small to hold a star”. 
{Continued on page 124) 
