32 
House & Garden 
THE 
WORLD 
OUTSIDE 
CITIES 
T he man whose interests are confined to the city has no conception 
of the vast cosmos that begins where the city ends. In towns, 
interests are centered and concentrated; in the country they are spread 
over a greater area, l)ut they are none the less vital and active and 
necessary to the enjo}ment of many people. 
The garden is a vast cosmos. Not until one actually has a garden, 
actually works in it and catches the fever of interest that gardening 
imparts can he understand the energy of this great world lying outside 
cities. Going from city life to country pleasures is as radical a change 
as if he stepped from the earth to Mars. Things dear to him in 
cities are annihilated in the country. The people speak a different 
tongue. They have different enthusiasms. The measures of enjoy¬ 
ment are more generous. The heart is set on other things. In the city 
one strives to drain the cup of Tvife, in the country to keep it filled. 
I STEPPED into a vast cosmos the 
other day when I opened the new 
edition of The American Rose Annual. 
In America there are 1,700 garden¬ 
ing enthusiasts who specialize on roses 
—^work with them the way philatelists 
work over stamp collecting. Seventeen 
hundred out of our great population 
may seem a mere handful, but these 
few are devoted and untiring in their 
interest for roses, and they have pro¬ 
duced some remarkable work in the 
past twenty-one years of the society’s 
career. 
I'he society co-operates with several 
institutions in maintaining rose-test 
gardens at Washington, Cornell Uni¬ 
versity, Hartford, Connecticut, and 
Portland, Oregon. New roses are 
judged and classified. Prizes are 
awarded for rose progress. The society 
is working to establish a public rose 
garden in every city park, to expand its 
membership so that roses will be ap¬ 
preciated and loved in more gardens, 
and to increase the honors it can bestow 
on those who create new worthy roses. 
Each year the society publishes an 
annual, which contains a record of the 
yearly rose thought and progress. A 
veritable treasure of information, this 
substantial little book, with its articles 
by famous rose growers, its lists of 
American roses and its advice for rosa- 
rians. To come from the city after a 
feverish day and turn the pages of this 
book is like having a gate to a new 
world opened before you. It is the cosmos of the rose, the vast area of 
one flower! It is filled with great wisdom and constant romance. 
B ut the world of the rose is only one of the many parts of the vast 
cosmos lying outside cities. And each world has its society of 
devoted enthusiasts. If you care for iris, there is the Iris Society; if 
you prefer orchids, you can join up with the orchid enthusiasts; if 
sweet peas are your favorite flower, you will find a Sweet Pea Society; 
if you love dahlias there is the active Dahlia Society which, by the 
way, is going to give a dahlia show in New York this fall—an entire 
show to a single flower! 
The list of these societies is long and varied. It runs the gamut 
from lordly trees to lowly'flowers. You may have your choice. 
And it is good to make a choice. Flower enthusiasts should be 
banded together, just as book-lovers have their club, to further the in¬ 
terests of their special hobby. Specialization will bring practical results. 
Even without venturing into the commercial field, one can turn his 
efforts into a proposition that pays in satisfaction and real enjoyment. 
At present these societies are working apart. It is to be hoped that 
they \vill eventually be amalgamated into one great body—form an 
American counterpart of the Royal Horticultural Society, with sub¬ 
divisions devoted to single flowers. United action l)y such a societ}' 
would bring better and cjuicker results in gardening development. 
Meantime, if one does not care to join a single flower society, there 
are the garden clubs, affiliated with a central association, with offices 
near New York, and the small, unattached, local bodies that profit by 
regular meetings and the sharing of garden experience. 
E very real gardener ought to belong to either one or the other kind 
of society—or both. If there is no garden society in your town, 
start one. Keep in mind the mutual benefit, the community’s welfare 
and the general big profit of gardening. The possibilities of such a 
club are incalculable. 
Consider just one activity that such a club can push forward— 
spraying. Each spring sees the usual scramble for the solitary indi¬ 
vidual in the locality who sprays trees. Often he is not available, 
and spraying is neglected. 
A tree plagued with disease is as dangerous a point of infection as 
a family with smallpox. We quarantine the family, but the tree is 
permitted to scatter its disease over half 
the countryside. 
The garden club can co-operate with 
the town authorities in purchasing a 
power sprayer, with which the work 
will be done in short order. Strict rules 
should be made for spraying each 
spring. The towm authorities should 
insist that all infected trees be sprayed 
and all trees that are apt to become 
infected. 
The day will come when country 
communities will consider a spraying 
machine as necessary as a fire engine, 
when these two pieces of equipment for 
the town’s safety will be housed side by 
side. 
T 
Rough plaster, brick trim, the wooden door and hollow 
tile steps combine pleasantly in this garden glimpse of 
the E. C. Stratton house at Rye, N. Y. Bertram Gros- 
venor Goodhue, architect 
HE growth of these clubs and 
single flower societies is an indica¬ 
tion of the increasin’g interest in gar¬ 
dening. It is America’s answer to the 
charge that we are a dollar-grabbing 
people. It is also a promise of our 
future. The activities of these societies 
are impelled by a great philosophy. Be¬ 
hind the rose and the iris and the 
dahlia stands a vast array of incontro¬ 
vertible facts, facts that make life more 
pleasant, more abundant, more vital. 
The man with a well-planted garden 
literally has the world at his feet. In 
the length of his pathside border he 
touches the farther reaches of the five 
continents and the innumerable isles. 
Roses from China, tulips from Holland, 
geraniums from the heart of Africa, 
dahlias from Mexico, iris from Siberia, 
wistaria from Japan. He travels far who has a garden. 
He is also in league with great forces—the wind, the rain, the sun, 
which can be both his friend and his foe. He watches the constant 
struggle between the tender growing things and their enemy pests. He 
sees a new creation each spring and witnesses the ruby holocaust of 
Autumn. He knows that the seed must go into the ground and die, 
before it can be resurrected again into blossom. He is schooled in 
patience and has learned to labor a long time for the benefits of 
harvest. 
But most of all, his wisdom lies in the fact that he chooses real 
things to work with and live among. Business built up on paper, 
fictitious commercial values, flimsy governments bolstered by hectic 
propaganda, preachers who have forgotten the Word and crave noto¬ 
riety, the bilge of social decadence, the fad, the crooked thinking, the 
macabre and sinister influences of crowded cities—from these things 
the man in the garden flees. His constant prayer is to be delivered . 
from them. The rose that he propagates, the iris that he brings to 
colorful ]:)erfection, the dahlia that he nurtures into an ecstacy of 
waxen beauty, the noble trees above him, the solid earth beneath his 
feet, the arc of sky, the multitude of stars—^these are real things, 
existing from the first day and to exist till the last. They are the 
gardener’s portion and his abundant reward. 
Share these enjoyments, then. Crystallize the benefits of your gar¬ 
den cosmos into something tangible for the coimnunity’s good. Join 
the movement to make better erardens. 
