,illustration3 ,that gardening is best 444 which best ministers to man's felicity with least disturbance of nature's freedom4 ,this is my study4 ,the tree in the middle of the picture is ,barrie's elm4 ,i once lifted it between my thumb and finger1 but ,i was younger and the tree was smaller4 ,the dark tree in the foreground on the right is ,felix ,adler's hemlock4 ,page #hb ,,the ,,amateur ,,garden ,,by ,,george ,w4 ,,cable ,,illustrated ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons ,,new ,,york3 ,,mcmxiv ,copyright1 #aiad1 by ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons ,published ,october1 #aiad ,,contents ,,page ,,my ,,own ,,acre #a ,,the ,,american ,,garden #da ,,where ,,to ,,plant ,,what #gi ,,the ,,cottage ,,gardens ,,of ,,northampton #ajg ,,the ,,private ,,garden',s ,,public ,,value #abi ,,the ,,midwinter ,,gardens ,,of ,,new ,,orleans #afc ,,illustrations ,that gardening is best 444 which best ministers to man's felicity with least disturbance of nature's freedom ,frontis 444 that suddenly falling wooded and broken ground where ,mill ,river loiters through ,paradise #f ,on this green of the dryads 444 lies ,my ,own ,acre #h ,the beautiful mill-pond behind its high dam keeps the river full back to the rapids just above ,my ,own ,acre #ab ,a fountain 444 where one1--or two1--can sit and hear it whisper #bb ,the bringing of the grove out on the lawn and the pushing of the lawn in under the grove was one of the early tasks of ,my ,own ,acre #bd ,souvenir trees had from time to time been planted on the lawn by visiting friends #bf ,how the words were said which some of the planters spoke #bh ',where are you going8' says the eye4 ',come and see1' says the roaming line #cd ,the lane is open to view from end to end4 ,it has two deep bays on the side nearest the lawn #cf 444 until the house itself seems as naturally 444 to grow up out of the garden as the high keynote rises at the end of a lady's song #dh ,beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds #eb ,muffle your architectural angles in foliage and bloom #eb ,fences masked by shrubbery #fd ,after the first frost annual plantings cease to be attractive #gb ,shrubbery versus annuals #gb ,shrubs are better than annuals for masking right angles4 ,south ,hall1 ,williston ,seminary #gd 444 a line of shrubbery swinging in and out in strong1 graceful undulations #gd ,however enraptured of wild nature you may be1 you do and must require of her some subserviency about your own dwelling #hd ,plant it where it will best enjoy itself #hf 444 climaxes to be got by superiority of stature1 by darkness and breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far end #id ,some clear disclosure of charm still remote may beckon and lure #if 444 tall1 rectangular1 three-story piles 444 full of windows all of one size1 pigeon-house style #ajj ,you can make gardening a concerted public movement #aab ,plant on all your lot's boundaries1 plant out the foundation-lines of all its buildings #abb ,not chiefly to reward the highest art in gardening1 but to procure its widest and most general dissemination #abb ,having wages bigger than their bodily wants1 and having spiritual wants numerous and elastic enough to use up the surplus #ach ,one such competing garden was so beautiful last year that strangers driving by stopped and asked leave to dismount and enjoy a nearer view #ach ,beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious domicile #adh ,those who pay no one to die1 plant or prune for them #adh ,in ,new ,orleans the home is bounded by its fences1 not by its doors--so they clothe them with shrubberies and vines #agd ,the lawn 444 lies clean-breasted1 green-breasted1 from one shrub-and-flower-planted side to the other1 along and across #agd ,there eight distinct encumbrances narrow the sward4444 ,in a half-day's work1 the fair scene might be enhanced in lovely dignity by the elimination of these excesses #agf ,the rear walk 444 follows the dwelling's ground contour with business precision--being a business path #agh ,thus may he wonderfully extenuate1 even 444 where it does not conceal1 the house's architectural faults #ahj 444 a lovely stage scene without a hint of the stage's unreality #ahb ,back of the building-line the fences 444 generally more than head-high 444 are sure to be draped #ahd 444 from the autumn side of ,christmas to the summer side of ,easter #ahd ,the sleeping beauty of the garden's unlost configuration 444 keeping a winter's share of its feminine grace and softness #ahf ,it is only there that ,i see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce #aib ,,my ,,own ,,acre ,a lifelong habit of story-telling has much to do with the production of these pages4 ,all the more does it move me because it has always included1 as perhaps it does in most story-tellers1 a keen preference for true stories1 stories of actual occurrence4 ,a flower-garden trying to be beautiful is a charming instance of something which a storyteller can otherwise only dream of4 ,for such a garden is itself a story1 one which actually and naturally occurs1 yet occurs under its master's guidance and control and with artistic effect4 ,yet it was this same story-telling bent which long held me back while from time to time ,i generalized on gardening and on gardens other than my own4 ,a well-designed garden is not only a true story happening artistically but it is one that passes through a new revision each year1 with the former translations diligently compared and revised4 ,each year my own acre has confessed itself so full of mistranslations of the true text of gardening1 has promised1 each season1 so much fairer a show in its next edition1 and has been kept so prolongedly busy teaching and reteaching its master where to plant what1 while as to money outlays compelled to live so much more like a poet than like a prince1 that the bent for story-telling itself could not help but say wait4 ,now1 however1 the company to which this chapter logically belongs is actually showing excellent reasons why a history of their writer's own acre should lead them4 ,let me1 then1 begin by explaining that the small city of ,northampton1 ,massachusetts1 where ,i have lived all the latter three-fifths of my adult years1 sits on the first rise of ground which from the west overlooks the alluvial meadows of the ,connecticut1 nine miles above ,south ,hadley ,falls4 ,close at its back a small stream1 ,mill ,river1 coming out of the ,hampshire hills on its way to the ,connecticut1 winds through a strip of woods so fair as to have been named--from a much earlier day than when ,jenny ,lind called it so--,paradise4 ,on its town side this wooded ground a few hundred yards wide drops suddenly a hundred feet or so to the mill stream and is cut into many transverse ravines4 ,in its timber growth1 conspicuous by their number1 tower white-pines1 while among them stand only less loftily a remarkable variety of forest trees imperfectly listed by a certain humble authority as mostly h-oak1 h-ellum1 and h-ash1 with a little 'ickory4 ,imperfectly listed1 for there one may find also the birch and the beech1 the linden1 sycamore1 chestnut1 poplar1 hemlock-spruce1 butternut1 and maple overhanging such pleasant undergrowths as the hornbeam and hop-hornbeam1 willows1 black-cherry and choke-cherry1 dogwood and other cornels1 several viburnums1 bush maples of two or three kinds1 alder1 elder1 sumach1 hazel1 witch-hazel1 the shadblow and other perennial1 fair-blooming1 sweet-smelling favorites1 beneath which lies a leaf-mould rife with ferns and wild flowers4 ,from its business quarter the town's chief street of residence1 ,elm ,street1 begins a gently winding westerly ascent to become an open high-road from one to another of the several farming and manufacturing villages that use the water-power of ,mill ,river4 ,but while it is still a street there runs from it southerly at a right angle a straight bit of avenue some three hundred yards long--an exceptional length of unbent street for ,northampton4 ,this short avenue ends at another1 still shorter1 lying square across its foot within some seventy yards of that suddenly falling wooded and broken ground where ,mill ,river loiters through ,paradise4 ,the strip of land between the woods and this last street is taken up by half a dozen dwellings of modest dignity1 whose front shade-trees1 being on the southerly side1 have been placed not on the sidewalk's roadside edge but on the side next the dwellings and close within their line of private ownership3 red1 white and post-oaks set there by the present writer when he named the street ,dryads' ,green4 ,they are now twenty-one years old and give a good shade which actually falls where it is wanted--upon the sidewalk4 ,illustration3 444 that suddenly falling wooded and broken ground where ,mill ,river loiters through ,paradise4 ,a strong wire fence 7invisible in the picture7 here divides the grove from the old river road4 ,on this green of the dryads1 where it intercepts the avenue that slips over from the ,elm ,street trolley-cars1 lies1 such as it is1 my own acre2 house1 lawn1 shrubberies and1 at the rear1 in the edge of the pines1 the study4 ,back there by the study--which sometimes in irony we call the power-house--the lawn merges into my seven other acres1 in ,paradise4 ,really the whole possession is a much humbler one than ,i find myself able to make it appear in the flattering terms of land measure4 ,those seven acres of ,paradise ,i acquired as waste land4 ,nevertheless1 if ,i were selling that waste1 that hole in the ground1 it would not hurt my conscience1 such as it is1 to declare that the birds on it alone are worth more than it cost3 wood-thrushes and robins1 golden orioles1 scarlet tanagers1 blackbirds1 bluebirds1 oven-birds1 cedar-birds1 veeries1 vireos1 song-sparrows1 flycatchers1 kinglets1 the flicker1 the cuckoo1 the nuthatch1 the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak1 not to mention jays or kingfishers1 swallows1 the little green heron or that cock of the walk1 the red squirrel4 ,speaking of walks1 it was with them--and one drive--in this grove1 that ,i made my first venture toward the artistic enhancement of my acre1--acre this time in the old sense that ignores feet and rods4 ,i was quite willing to make it a matter of as many years as necessary when pursued as play1 not work1 on the least possible money outlay and having for its end a garden of joy1 not of care4 ,by no inborn sagacity did ,i discover this to be the true first step1 but by the trained eye of an honored and dear friend1 that distinguished engineer and famous street commissioner of ,new ,york1 ,colonel ,george ,e4 ,waring1 who lost his life in the sanitary regeneration of ,havana4 ,illustration3 ,on this green of the dryads 444 lies ,my ,own ,acre4 ,the two young oaks in the picture are part of the row which gives the street its name4 ,contour paths was the word he gave me2 paths starting from the top of the steep broken ground and bending in and out across and around its ridges and ravines at a uniform decline of1 say1 six inches to every ten feet1 until the desired terminus is reached below2 much as1 in its larger way1 a railway or aqueduct might1 or as cattle do when they roam in the hills4 ,thus1 by the slightest possible interference with natural conditions1 these paths were given a winding course every step of which was pleasing because justified by the necessities of the case1 traversing the main inequalities of the ground with the ease of level land yet without diminishing its superior variety and charm4 ,and so with contour paths ,i began to find1 right at my back door and on my own acre1 in nerve-tired hours1 an outdoor relaxation which ,i could begin1 leave off and resume at any moment and which has never staled on me4 ,for this was the genesis of all ,i have learned or done in gardening1 such as it is4 ,my appliances for laying out the grades were simple enough3 a spirit-level1 a stiff ten-foot rod with an eighteen-inch leg nailed firmly on one end of it1 a twelve-inch leg on the other1 a hatchet1 and a basket of short stakes with which to mark the points1 ten feet apart1 where the longer leg1 in front on all down grades1 rested when the spirit-level1 strapped on the rod1 showed the rod to be exactly horizontal4 ,trivial inequalities of surface were arbitrarily cut down or built up and covered with leaves and pine-straw to disguise the fact1 and whenever a tree or anything worth preserving stood in the way here came the loaded barrow and the barrowist1 like a piece of artillery sweeping into action1 and a fill undistinguishable from nature soon brought the path around the obstacle on what had been its lower side1 to meander on at its unvarying rate of rise or fall as though nothing--except the trees and wild flowers--had happened since the vast freshets of the post-glacial period built the landscape4 ,i made the drive first1 of steeper grade than the paths2 but every new length of way built1 whether walk or road1 made the next easier to build1 by making easier going for the artillery1 the construction train4 ,also each new path has made it easier to bring up1 for the lawn garden1 sand1 clay1 or leaf-mould1 or for hearth consumption all the wood which the grove's natural mortality each year requires to be disposed of4 ,there is a superior spiritual quality in the warmth of a fire of h-oak1 h-ash1 and even h-ellum gathered from your own acre1 especially if the acre is very small and has contour paths4 ,by a fire of my own acre's dead and down ,i write these lines4 ,i never buy cordwood4 ,only half the grove has required these paths1 the other half being down on the flat margin of the river1 traversed by a cart-road at least half a century old1 though used by wheels hardly twice a year2 but in the three acres where lie the contour paths there is now three-fifths of a mile of them1 not a rod of which is superfluous4 ,and then ,i have two examples of another kind of path3 paths with steps2 paths which for good and lawful reasons cannot allow you time to go around on the five per cent grade but must cut across1 taking a single ravine lengthwise1 to visit its three fish-pools4 ,these steps1 and two short retaining walls elsewhere in the grove1 are made of the field stones of the region1 uncut4 ,all are laid dry like the ordinary stone fences of ,new ,england farms1 and the walls are built with a smart inward batter so that the winter frosts may heave them year after year1 heave and leave but not tumble them down4 ,i got that idea from a book4 ,everything worth while on my acre is from books except what two or three professional friends have from time to time dropped into my hungry ear4 ,both my ears have good appetites--for garden lore4 ,about half a mile from me1 down ,mill ,river1 stands the factory of a prized friend who more than any other man helps by personal daily care to promote ,northampton's ,people's ,institute1 of whose home-garden work ,i have much to say in the chapters that follow this one4 ,for forty years or more this factory has been known far and wide as the ,hoe ,shop because it makes shovels4 ,it has never made hoes4 ,it uses water-power1 and the beautiful mill-pond behind its high dam keeps the river full back to the rapids just above my own acre4 ,in winter this is the favorite skating-pond of the town and of ,smith ,college4 ,in the greener seasons of college terms the girls constantly pass upstream and down in their pretty rowboats and canoes1 making a charming effect as seen from my lawn's rear edge at the head of the pine and oak shaded ravine whose fish-pools are gay by turns with elder1 wild sunflower1 sumach1 iris1 water-lilies1 and forget-me-not4 ,illustration3 ,the beautiful mill-pond behind its high dam keeps the river full back to the rapids just above ,my ,own ,acre4 ,this is the ,hoe ,shop4 ,the tower was ruined by fire many years ago1 and because of its unsafety is being taken down at the present writing4 ,this ravine1 the middle one of the grove's three1 is about a hundred feet wide4 ,when ,i first began to venture the human touch in it1 it afforded no open spot level enough to hold a camp-stool4 ,from the lawn above to the river road below1 the distance is three hundred and thirty feet1 and the fall1 of fifty-five feet1 is mostly at the upper end1 which is therefore too steep1 as well as too full of varied undergrowth1 for any going but climbing4 ,in the next ravine on its left there was a clear1 cold spring and in the one on its right ran a natural rivulet that trickled even in ,august2 but this middle ravine was dry or merely moist4 ,here let me say to any who would try an amateur landscape art on their own acre at the edge of a growing town1 that the town's growth tends steadily to diminish the amount of their landscape's natural water supply by catching on street pavements and scores and hundreds of roofs1 lawns and walks1 and carrying away in sewers1 the rain and melting snows which for ages filtered slowly through the soil4 ,small wonder1 ,i think1 that1 when in the square quarter-mile between my acre and ,elm ,street fifty-three dwellings and three short streets took the place of an old farm1 my grove1 by sheer water famine1 lost several of its giant pines4 ,wonder to me is that the harm seems at length to have ceased4 ,but about that ravine3 one day the nature of its growth and soil1 especially its alders1 elders1 and willows and a show of clay and gravel1 forced on my notice the likelihood that here1 too1 had once been a spring1 if no more4 ,i scratched at its head with a stick and out came an imprisoned rill like a recollected word from the scratched head of a schoolboy4 ,happily the spot was just at the bottom of the impassably steep fall of ground next the edge of the lawn and was almost in the centre of those four acres--one of sward1 three of woods--which ,i proposed to hold under more or less discipline1 leaving the rest--a wooded strip running up the river shore--wholly wild1 as college girls1 for example1 would count wildness4 ,in both parts the wealth of foliage on timber and underbrush almost everywhere shut the river out of view from the lawn and kept the eye restless for a glint1 if no more1 of water4 ,and so there ,i thought at once to give myself what ,i had all my life most absurdly wished for1 a fish-pool4 ,i had never been able to look upon an aquarium and keep the tenth ,commandment4 ,i had never caught a fish without wanting to take it home and legally adopt it into the family--a tendency which once led my son to say1 ,yes1 he would be pleased to go fishing with me if ,i would only fish in a sportsmanlike manner4 ,what a beautifully marked fish is the sun-perch6 ,once1 in boyhood1 ,i kept six of those pumpkin-seed in a cistern1 and my smile has never been the same since ,i lost them--one of my war losses4 ,i resolved to impound the waters of my spring in the ravine and keep fish at last--without salt--to my heart's content4 ,yet ,i remembered certain restraining precepts3 first1 that law of art which condemns incongruity--requires everything to be in keeping with its natural surroundings--and which therefore1 for one thing1 makes an ,american garden the best possible sort of garden to have in ,america2 second1 that twin art law1 against inutility1 which demands that everything in an artistic scheme serve the use it pretends to serve2 third1 a precept of ,colonel ,waring's3 ,don't fool with running water if you haven't money to fool away2 and1 fourth1 that best of all gardening rules--look before you leap4 ,however1 on second thought1 and tenth1 and twentieth1 one thought a day for twenty days1 ,i found that if water was to be impounded anywhere on my acre here was the strategic point4 ,down this ravine1 as ,i have said1 was the lawn's one good glimpse of the river1 and a kindred gleam intervening would tend1 in effect1 to draw those farther waters in under the trees and into the picture4 ,such relationships are very rewarding to find to whoever would garden well4 ,hence this mention4 ,one's garden has to do with whatever is in sight from it1 fair or otherwise1 and it is as feasible and important to plant in the fair as to plant out the otherwise4 ,also1 in making my grove paths1 ,i had noticed that to cross this ravine where at one or two places in its upper half a contour grade would have been pettily circuitous and uninteresting1 and to cross it comfortably1 there should be either a bridge or a dam2 and a dam with water behind it seemed pleasanter every way--showed less incongruity and less inutility--than a bridge with no water under it4 ,as to fooling with running water1 the mere trickle here in question had to be dragged out of its cradle to make it run at all4 ,it remained for me to find out by experience that even that weakling1 imprisoned and grown to a pool1 though of only three hundred square feet in surface1 when aided and abetted by ,new ,england frosts and exposed on a southern slope to winter noonday suns1 could give its amateur captor as much trouble--proportionately--as any ,hebrew babe drawn from the bulrushes of the ,nile is said to have given his4 ,now if there is any value in recording these experiences it can be only in the art principles they reveal4 ,to me in the present small instance the principle illustrated was that of the true profile line for ascent or descent in a garden4 ,you may go into any ,american town where there is any inequality of ground and in half an hour find a hundred or two private lawns graded--from the house to each boundary line--on a single falling curve1 or1 in plain ,english1 a hump4 ,the best reason why this curve is not artistic1 not pleasing1 but stupid1 is that it is not natural and gains nothing by being unnatural4 ,all gardening is a certain conquest of ,nature1 and even when formal should interfere with her own manner and custom as slightly as is required by the necessities of the case--the needs of that particular spot's human use and joy4 ,the right profile and surface for a lawn of falling grade1 the surface which will permanently best beguile both eye and foot1 should follow a double curve1 an ogee line4 ,for1 more or less emphasized1 that is ,nature's line in all her affable moods on land or water3 a descent or ascent beginning gradually1 increasing rapidly1 and concluding gently4 ,we see it in the face of any smooth knoll or billow4 ,i believe the artists impute to ,praxiteles a certain ownership in this double curve4 ,it is a living line2 it suggests ,nature conscious and astir as no single curve or straight line can4 ,i admit that even among amateurs this is rather small talk1 but it brings me to this point3 in the passage of water down a ravine of its own making1 this line of ,nature astir may repeat itself again and again but is commonly too inaffable1 abrupt1 angular1 to suggest the ogee4 ,in that middle part of it where the descent is swift it may be more or less of a plunge1 and after the plunge the water is likely to pause on the third turn1 in a natural pool1 before resuming its triple action again4 ,and so1 in my ravine1 some seasons later1 ,i ventured to detain the overflow of my first pool on a second and a third lingering place1 augmenting the water supply by new springs developed in the bottoms of the new pools4 ,the second pool has a surface of a thousand square feet1 the third spans nineteen hundred1 and there are fish in all three1 hatched there--pumpkin-seed included1 but also trout--among spontaneous bulrushes1 pond-lilies1 flags1 and dainty water-weeds2 and sometimes at night1 when the reflected glory of a ten-o'clock full moon shines up from it to the stone exedra on the lawn1 ,i seem to have taken my ,praxitelean curves so directly from ,nature that she thinks she took them herself from me and thanks me for the suggestion4 ,please observe that of great gardens1 or of costly gardens whether great or only costly1 we here say nothing4 ,our theme is such a garden as a householder may himself make and keep or for which1 at most1 he needs professional advice only in its first planning1 and for its upkeep one gardener1 with one occasional helper in pressing seasons or in constructional work4 ,constructional work4 ,dams1 for example4 ,in two of my dams ,i built cores of concrete and thus made acquaintance with that interesting material4 ,later ,i pressed the acquaintanceship1 made garden and grove seats1 a table or two1 a very modest fountain for a single jet of water in my highest1 smallest fish-pool1 and even a flight of steps with a pair of gane-shaped pedestals--suggested by a sculptor friend--at their top4 ,the exedra ,i mentioned just now is of concrete4 ,the stuff is a temptation to be wary of4 ,the ordinary gray sort--,i have touched no other--is a humble medium1 and pretentious designs in humble materials are one of the worst1 and oldest1 of garden incongruities4 ,in my ventures with concrete ,i have studied for grace in form but grace subordinated to stability1 and have shunned embellishment4 ,embellishment for its own sake is the easiest and commonest sin against good art wherever art becomes self-conscious4 ,it is having a riotous time just now in concrete4 ,i have rarely seen a commercial concrete garden-seat which was not more ornate than ,i should want it for my own acre4 ,i happen to have two or three articles in my garden which are a trifle elaborate but they are of terra-cotta1 are not home-made and would be plainer could ,i have found them so4 ,a garden needs furniture only less than a house1 and concrete is a boon to natural gardening1 being inexpensive1 rustic1 and imperishable4 ,i fancy a chief reason why there is such inconsiderate dearth of seats and steps in our ,american amateur gardens is the old fashion--so well got rid of at any cost--of rustic cedar and hickory stairs and benches4 ,have none of them1 was ,colonel ,waring's injunction2 they are forever out of repair4 ,but ,i fear another reason is that so often our gardens are neither for private ease nor social joy1 but for public display and are planned mainly for street exhibition4 ,that is the way we commonly treat garden fountains6 ,we make a smug show of unfenced1 unhedged1 universal hospitality across a sidewalk boundary which nevertheless we hold inviolate--sometimes by means of a painted sign or gas-pipe--and never say ,have a seat to the dearest friend in any secluded nook of our shrubberies1 if there is such a nook4 ,how many of us know a fountain beside an embowered seat where one1--or two1--with or without the book of verses1 can sit and hear it whisper or watch the moonlight cover it with silent kisses8 ,in my limited experience ,i have known of but two4 ,one is by the once favorite thought-promoting summer seat of ,augustus ,saint-,gaudens on his own home acre in ,vermont2 the other ,i need not particularize further than to say that it is one of the things which interlock and unify a certain garden and grove4 ,illustration3 ,a fountain 444 where one1--or two1--can sit and hear it whisper4 ,the ravine of the three fish pools4 ,there is a drop of thirty feet between the upper and the lowermost pool4 ,the bringing of the grove out on the lawn and the pushing of the lawn in under the grove was one of the early tasks of my own acre4 ,when the house was built its lot and others backed up to a hard1 straight rear line where the old field had halted at its fence and where the woods began on ground that fell to the river at an angle of from forty to fifty degrees4 ,here my gifted friend and adviser gave me a precept got from his earlier gifted friend and adviser1 ,frederick ,law ,olmsted3 that passing from any part of a pleasure-ground to any part next it should be entirely safe and easy or else impossible4 ,by the application of this maxim ,i brought my lawn and grove together in one of the happiest of marriages4 ,for ,i proceeded1 by filling with earth 7and furnace ashes71 to carry the lawn in1 practically level1 beyond the old fence line and under the chestnuts and pines sometimes six feet1 sometimes twelve1 until the difficult and unsafe forty or fifty degrees of abrupt fall were changed to an impassable sixty and seventy degrees1 and every one's instinctive choice of way was the contour paths4 ,at the same time this has preserved1 and even enhanced1 the place's wildness1 especially the wild flowers and the low-nesting birds4 ,sometimes a few yards of retaining-wall1 never cemented1 always laid up dry and with a strong inward batter1 had to be put in to avoid smothering the roots of some great tree2 for1 as everybody knows and nearly everybody forgets1 roots1 like fishes1 must have air4 ,in one place1 across the filled head of a ravine1 the wall1 though but a scant yard high1 is fifty feet long1 and there is another place where there should be one like it4 ,in this work no tree was sacrificed save one noble oak done to death by a youth who knew but forgot that roots must have air4 ,not to make the work expensive it was pursued slowly1 through many successive seasons2 yet before even its easy1 first half was done the lawn was in under the grove on an apparently natural1 irregular crest line4 ,moreover the grove was out on the lawn with an even more natural haphazard bordering line2 for another operation had been carried on meantime4 ,trees1 souvenir trees1 had from time to time been planted on the lawn by visiting friends4 ,most of them are set close enough to the grove to become a part of it1 standing in a careful irregularity which has already obliterated1 without molesting1 the tree line of the ancient fence4 ,illustration3 ,the bringing of the grove out on the lawn and the pushing of the lawn in under the grove was one of the early tasks of ,my ,own ,acre4 ,at the point where the party is drinking tea 7the site of the ,indian mound7 the overlap of grove and lawn is eighty-five feet across the old fence line that once sharply divided them4 ,young senators among their seniors1 they still have much growth to make before they can enter into their full forest dignity1 yet ,henry ,ward ,beecher's elm is nearly two feet through and has a spread of fifty2 ,max ,o',rell's white-ash is a foot in diameter and fifty feet high2 ,edward ,atkinson's is something more1 and ,felix ,adler's hemlock-spruce1 the maple of ,anthony ,hope ,hawkins1 ,l4 ,clark ,seelye's ,english ash1 ,henry van ,dyke's white-ash1 ,sol ,smith ,russell's linden1 and ,hamilton ,wright ,mabie's horse-chestnut are all about thirty-five feet high and cast a goodly shade4 ,sir ,james ,m4 ,barrie's elm--his and ,sir ,william ,robertson ,nicoll's1 who planted it with him later than the plantings aforementioned--has1 by some virtue in the soil or in its own energies1 reached a height of nearly sixty-five feet and a diameter of sixteen inches4 ,other souvenirs are a horse-chestnut planted by ,minnie ,maddern ,fiske1 a ginkgo by ,alice ,freeman ,palmer1 a beech by ,paul van ,dyke1 a horse-chestnut by ,anna ,hempstead ,branch1 another by ,sir ,sidney ,lee1 yet another by ,mary ,e4 ,burt1 a catalpa by ,madelaine ,wynne1 a ,colorado blue spruce--fitly placed after much labor of mind--by ,sir ,moses ,ezekiel1 and a ,kentucky coffee-tree by ,gerald ,stanley ,lee and ,jennette ,lee1 of our own town4 ,among these should also stand the maple of ,sir ,arthur ,conan ,doyle1 but it was killed in its second winter by an undetected mouse at its roots4 ,except ,sir ,moses1 all the knights here named received the accolade after their tree plantings1 but ,i draw no moral4 ,illustration3 ,souvenir trees had from time to time been planted on the lawn by visiting friends4 ,the ,beecher elm1 first of the souvenir trees4 ,would it were practicable to transmit to those who may know these trees in later days the scenes of their setting out and to tell just how the words were said which some of the planters spoke4 ,mr4 ,beecher1 lover of young trees and young children1 straightened up after pressing the soil about the roots with hands as well as feet and said3 ,i cannot wish you to live as long as this tree1 but may your children's children and their children sit under its shade4 ,said ,felix ,adler to his hemlock-spruce1 ,vivat1 crescat1 floreat2 and a sentiment much like it was implied in ,sol ,smith ,russell's words to the grove's master as they finished putting in his linden together--for he was just then proposing to play ,rip ,van ,winkle1 which ,joseph ,jefferson had finally decided to produce no more3 ,here's to your healt'1 undt der healt' of all your family2 may you lif long undt brosper4 ,we--the first person singular grows tiresome--we might have now1 on our acre1 a tree planted by ,joseph ,jefferson had we thought in time to be provided with a sapling1 growing1 in a tub4 ,have your prospective souvenir tree already tubbed and waiting4 ,this idea ,i got from ,andrew ,carnegie1 with whom ,i had the honor to plant an oak at ,skibo ,castle and from whom ,i1 like so many others1 have had other things almost as good as ideas4 ,have your prospective souvenir tree tubbed and the tub sunk in the ground1 of course1 to its rim4 ,then the dear friend can plant it at any time that he may chance along between ,march and ,december4 ,but let no souvenir tree1 however planted1 be treated1 after planting1 as other than a living thing if you would be just to it1 to your friend1 or to yourself4 ,cultivate it2 coax it on2 and it will grow two or three or four times as fast as if left to fight its daily battle for life unaided4 ,and do not forbear to plant trees because they grow so slowly4 ,they need not4 ,they do not4 ,with a little attention they grow so swiftly6 ,before you know it you are sitting in their shade4 ,besides ,sir ,arthur's maple the only souvenir tree we have lost was a tulip-tree planted by my friend of half a lifetime1 the late ,franklin ,h4 ,head4 ,so much for my grove4 ,i write of it not in self-complacency4 ,my many blunders1 some of them yet to be made1 are a good insurance against that4 ,i write because of the countless acres as good as mine1 in this great1 dear ,america1 which might now be giving their owners all the healthful pastime1 private solace1 or solitary or social delights which this one yields1 yet which are only waste lands or holes in the ground because unavailable for house lots or tillage4 ,illustration3 ,how the words were said which some of the planters spoke4 ,president ,seelye of ,smith ,college planting a tree4--,a majority of the company present were ,smith ,college students and others engaged in the work of the ,people's ,institute4 ,the tree on the left is ,barrie's elm4 ,the tree directly behind the small sapling which is being planted1 and on a line with it1 is ,max ,o',rell's4 ,the hemlock-spruce between them is ,felix ,adler's4 ,and now as to the single acre by measure1 of lawn1 shrubs1 and plants1 close around my house2 for the reason that it was and is my school of gardening4 ,there was no garden here--,i write this in the midst of it--when ,i began4 ,ten steps from where ,i sit there had been a small ,indian mound which some one had carefully excavated4 ,i found stone arrow chips on the spot1 and one whole arrow-head4 ,so here no one else's earlier skill was in evidence to point my course or impede it4 ,this was my clean new slate and at that time ,i had never done a sum in gardening and got anything like a right answer4 ,it is emphatically an amateur garden and a book garden3 a garden which to me1 as to most of us1 would have been impossible in any but these days when the whole art of gardening has been printed in books and no amateur is excusable for trying to garden without reading them1 or for saying after having read them that he has planned and worked without professional advice4 ,the books are the professional advice1 with few drawbacks and with the great advantage that they are ours truly and do not even have to be 'phoned4 ,i should rather have in my library my ,bailey's ,american ,cyclopedia of ,horticulture1 than any two garden periodicals once a month4 ,these1 too1 ,i value1 but1 for me1 they are over-apt to carry too much deckload of the advice and gentle vauntings of other amateurs4 ,i have an amateur's abhorrence of amateurs6 ,the ,cyclopedia knows1 and will always send me to the right books if it cannot thresh a matter out with me itself4 ,before ,bailey my fount of knowledge was ,mr4 ,e4 ,j4 ,canning1 late of ,smith ,college ,botanic ,gardens2 a spring still far from dry4 ,as the books enjoin1 ,i began my book-gardening with a plan on paper2 not the elaborate thing one pays for when he can give his garden more money than time1 but a light sketch1 a mere fundamental suggestion4 ,this came professionally from a landscape-architect1 ,miss ,frances ,bullard1 of ,bridgeport1 ,connecticut1 who had just finished plotting the grounds of my neighbor1 the college4 ,i tell of my own garden for another reason3 that it shows1 ,i think1 how much can be done with how little1 if for the doing you take time instead of money4 ,all things come to the garden that knows how to wait4 ,mine has acquired at leisure a group of effects which would have cost from ten to twenty times as much if got in a hurry4 ,garden for ten-year results and get them for next to nothing1 and at the same time you may quicken speed whenever your exchequer smiles broadly enough4 ,of course this argument is chiefly for those who have the time and not the money2 for by time we mean play time1 time which is money lost if you don't play4 ,the garden that gives the most joy1 ,joyous ,gard1 as ,sir ,launcelot named his1 is not to be bought1 like a ,circassian slave2 it must be brought up1 like a daughter4 ,how much of life they can miss who can buy whatever they want whenever they want it6 ,but ,i tell first of my own garden also because ,i believe it summarizes to the eye a number of primary book-rules1 authoritative don'ts1 by the observance of which a multitude of amateur gardeners may get better results than it yet shows4 ,nevertheless1 ,i will hardly do more than note a few exceptions to these ground rules1 which may give the rules a more convincing force4 ,first of all1 don't let any of your planting cut or split your place in two4 ,how many a small house-lot lawn we see split down the middle by a row of ornamental shrubs or fruit-trees which might as easily have been set within a few feet of the property line1 whose rigidity1 moreover1 would have best excused the rigidity of the planted line4 ,but such glaring instances aside1 there are many subtler ones quite as unfortunate2 don't be too sure you are not unwittingly furnishing one4 ,don't destroy the openness of your sward by dotting it with shrubs or pattern flower-beds4 ,to this rule ,i doubt if a plausible exception could be contrived4 ,it is so sweeping and so primary that we might well withhold it here were we not seeking to state its artistic reason why4 ,which is1 that such plantings are mere eruptions of individual smartness1 without dignity and with no part in any general unity2 chirping up like pert children in a company presumably trying to be rational4 ,on the other hand1 ,i hope my acre1 despite all its unconscious or unconfessed mistakes1 shows pleasantly that the best openness of a lawn is not to be got between unclothed1 right-angled and parallel bounds4 ,the more its verdure-clad borders swing in and out the longer they look1 not merely because they are longer but also because they interest and lure the eye4 ,where are you going8 says the eye4 ,come and see1 says the roaming line4 ,don't plant in stiff lines except in close relation to architectural or legal bounds4 ,a straight horizontal line ,nature scarcely knows save in her rocks and on a vaster scale than we here have to do with4 ,yet straight lines in gardening are often good and fine if only they are lines of real need4 ,where1 when and in what degree it is good to subordinate utility to beauty or beauty to utility depends on time1 place and circumstance1 but when in doubt don't pinch either to pet the other4 ,oppression is never good art4 ,yet don't cry war1 war1 where there is no war4 ,a true beauty and a needed utility may bristle on first collision but they soon make friends4 ,was it not ,ruskin himself who wanted to butt the railway-train off the track and paw up the rails--something like that8 ,but even between them and the landscape there is now an entente cordiale4 ,i have seen the hand of ,joseph ,pennell make beautiful peace with billboards and telegraph-poles and wires4 ,the railway points us to the fact that along the ground ,nature is as innocent of parallel lines1 however bent1 as of straight ones1 and that in landscape-gardening parallels should be avoided unless they are lines of utility4 ,don't lay parallel lines1 either straight or curved1 where ,nature would not and utility need not4 ,yet my own acre has taught me a modification of this rule so marked as to be almost an exception4 ,on each side of me next my nearest neighbor ,i have a turfed alley between a continuous bed of flowering shrubs and plants next the division line1 and a similar bed whose meanderings border my lawn4 ,at first ,i gave these two alleys a sinuous course in correspondence with the windings of the bed bordering the lawn--for they were purely ways of pleasure among the flowers1 and a loitering course seemed only reasonable4 ,but sinuous lines proved as disappointing in the alleys as they were satisfying out on the lawn1 and by and by ,i saw that whereas the bendings of the open lawn's borders lured and rewarded the eye1 the same curves in the alleys obstructed and baffled it4 ,the show of floral charms was piecemeal1 momentary and therefore trivial4 ,don't be trivial6 ,illustration3 ',where are you going8' says the eye4 ',come and see1' says the roaming line4 ,this planting conceals one of the alleys described on page #cd4 ,in the alley a concrete bench built into a concrete wall looks across the entire breadth of the garden and into the sunset4 ,but a cure was easy4 ,i had to straighten but one side of each alley to restore the eye's freedom of perspective1 and nothing more was wanting4 ,the ,american eye's freedom of perspective is one of our great liberties4 ,oh1 say1 can you see--8 ,i made this change1 of course1 on the side nearest the straight1 property-division bound1 where ran an invisible wire fence4 ,thus the bed on that side was set between two straight parallels1 while the bed on the lawn side remained between waving parallels4 ,this gave the best simplicity with the least artificiality4 ,and thus the two lanes are open to view from end to end1 yet each has two deep bays on the side nearest the lawn1 bays which remain unseen till one actually reaches them in traversing the lane4 ,in such a bay one should always have1 ,i think1 some floral revelation of special charm worthy of the seclusion and the surprise4 ,but this thought is only one of a hundred that tell me my garden is not a finished thing4 ,to its true lover a garden never is4 ,another sort of bay1 the sort resulting from a swift retreat of a line of shrubberies pursued by the lawn and then swinging round and returning upon the lawn in a counter pursuit1 ,i thought ,i had learned from books and ,miss ,bullard and had established on my own acre1 until ,i saw the college gardens of ,oxford1 ,england1 and the landscape work in ,hyde ,park1 ,london4 ,on my return thence ,i made haste to give my own garden's in-and-out curves twice the boldness they had had4 ,and doubling their boldness ,i doubled their beauty4 ,don't ever let your acre's1 or half or quarter acre's1 ground lines relax into feebleness or shrink into pettiness4 ,don't ever plan a layout for whose free swing your limits are cramped4 ,illustration3 ,the lane is open to view from end to end4 ,it has two deep bays on the side nearest the lawn4 ,the straight line of high growth conceals in the midst of its foliage a wire division fence1 and makes a perfect background for blooming herbaceous perennials4 ,don't ever1 if you can help it1 says another of my old mistakes to me1 let your acre lead your guest to any point which can be departed from only by retracing one's steps4 ,such necessities involve a lapse--not to say collapse--of interest1 which makes for dulness and loss of dignity4 ,lack what my own acre may1 ,i have it now so that by its alleys1 lawns and contour paths in garden and grove we can walk and walk through every part of it without once meeting our own tracks1 and that is not all because of the pleasant fact that the walks1 where not turfed1 are covered with pine-straw1 of which each new ,september drops us a fresh harvest4 ,a garden1 we say1 should never compel us to go back the way we came2 but in truth a garden should never compel us to do anything4 ,its don'ts should be laid solely on itself4 ,those applicable to its master1 mistress1 or guests should all be impossibilities1 not requests4 ,private grounds1 no crossing--take that away1 please1 wherever you can1 and plant your margins so that there can be no crossing4 ,wire nettings hidden by shrubberies from all but the shameless trespasser you will find far more effective1 more promotive to beauty and more courteous4 ,don't make your garden a garden of don'ts4 ,for no garden is quite a garden until it is ,joyous ,gard4 ,let not yours or mine be a garden for display4 ,then our rhododendrons and like splendors will not be at the front gate1 and our grounds be less and less worth seeing the farther into them we go4 ,nor let yours or mine be a garden of pride4 ,the ways of such a garden are not pleasantness nor its paths peace4 ,and let us not have a garden of tiring care or a user up of precious time4 ,that is not good citizenship4 ,neither let us have an old-trousers1 sun-bonnet1 black finger-nails garden--especially if you are a woman4 ,a garden that makes a wife1 daughter or sister a dowdy is hardly ,joyous ,gard4 ,neither is one which makes itself a mania to her and an affliction to her family4 ,let us not even have1 you or me1 a wonder garden--of arboreal or floral curiosities4 ,perhaps because ,i have not travelled enough ,i have never seen a garden of exotics that was a real garden in any good art sense2 in any way1 that is1 lastingly pleasing to a noble spirit4 ,let your garden1 and let mine1 be the garden of joy4 ,for the only way it can be that1 on and on1 year in1 year out1 is to be so good in art and so finely human in its purposes that to have it and daily keep it will make us more worth while to ourselves and to mankind than to go without it4 ,,the ,,american ,,garden ,almost any good ,american will admit it to be a part of our national social scheme1 ,i think1--if we have a social scheme1--that everybody shall aspire to all the refinements of life4 ,particularly is it our theory that every one shall propose to give to his home all the joys and graces which are anywhere associated with the name of home4 ,yet until of late we have neglected the art of gardening4 ,now and then we see1 or more likely we read about1 some garden of wonderful beauty2 but the very fame of it points the fact that really artistic gardening is not democratically general with us4 ,our cities and towns1 without number1 have the architect and the engineer1 for house and for landscape1 for sky-scrapers and all manner of public works2 we have the nurseryman1 the florist2 we have parks1 shaded boulevards and riverside and lakeside drives4 ,under private ownership we have a vast multitude of exactly rectilinear lawns1 extremely bare or else very badly planted2 and we have hundreds of thousands of beautiful dames and girls who love flowers4 ,but our home gardens1 our home gardeners1 either professional or amateur1 where are they8 ,our smaller cities by scores and our towns by hundreds are full of home-dwellers each privately puzzled to know why every one of his neighbors' houses1 however respectable in architecture1 stares at him and after him with a vacant1 deaf-mute air of having just landed in this country1 without friends4 ,what ails these dwellings is largely lack of true gardening4 ,they will never look like homes1 never look really human and benign1 that is1 until they are set in a gardening worthy of them4 ,for a garden which alike in its dignity and in its modesty is worthy of the house around which it is set1 is the smile of the place4 ,in the small city of ,northampton1 ,massachusetts1 there has been for many years an annual prize competition of amateur flower-gardens4 ,in #aiac there were over a thousand homes1 about one-fourth of all the dwellings in the town1 in this pretty contest4 ,not all1 not half1 these competitors could make a show worthy the name of good gardening1 but every one of these households stood pledged to do something during the year for the outdoor improvement of the home1 and hundreds of their house lots were florally beautiful4 ,if ,i seem to hurry into a mention of it here it is partly in the notion that such a recital may be my best credentials as the writer of these pages1 and partly in the notion that such a concrete example may possibly have a tendency to help on flower-gardening in the country at large and even to aid us in determining what ,american flower-gardening had best be4 ,for the reader's better advantage1 however1 let me first state one or two general ideas which have given this activity and its picturesque results particular aspects and not others4 ,i lately heard a lady ask an amateur gardener1 ,what is the garden's foundation principle8 ,there was a certain overgrown pomp in the question's form1 but that is how she very modestly asked it1 and ,i will take no liberty with its construction4 ,i thought his reply a good one4 ,we have all1 he said1 come up from wild nature4 ,in wild nature there are innumerable delights1 but they are qualified by countless inconveniences4 ,the cave1 tent1 cabin1 cottage and castle have gradually been evolved by an orderly accumulation and combination of defences and conveniences which secure to us a host of advantages over wild nature and wild man4 ,yet rightly we are loath to lose any more of nature than we must in order to be her masters and her children in one1 and to gather from her the largest fund of profit and delight she can be made to yield4 ,hence around the cottage1 the castle or the palace waves and blooms the garden4 ,was he not right8 ,this is why1 in our pleasant ,northampton affair1 we have accepted it as our first rule of private gardening that the house is the climacteric note4 ,this is why the garden should never be more architectural and artificial than the house of which it is the setting1 and this is why the garden should grow less and less architectural and artificial as it draws away from the house4 ,to say the same thing in reverse1 the garden1 as it approaches the house1 should accept more and more discipline--domestication--social refinement1 until the house itself at length seems as unabruptly and naturally to grow up out of the garden as the high keynote rises at the end of a lady's song4 ,by this understanding of the matter what a fine truce-note is blown between the contending advocates of natural and of formal gardening6 ,the right choice between these two aspects of the art1 and the right degree in either choice1 depend on the character of the house4 ,the house is a part of the garden4 ,it is the garden's brow and eyes4 ,in gardening1 almost the only thing which costs unduly is for us to try to give our house some other house's garden4 ,one's private garden should never be quite so far removed from a state of nature as his house is4 ,its leading function should be to delight its house's inmates 7and intimates7 in things of nature so refined as to inspire and satisfy their happiest moods4 ,therefore no garden should cost1 nor look as if it cost1 an outlay of money1 time or toil that cramps the house's own ability to minister to the genuine bodily needs and spiritual enlargements of its indwellers2 and therefore1 also1 it should never seem to cost1 in its first making or in its daily keeping1 so much pains as to lack1 itself1 a garden's supreme essential--tranquillity4 ,so1 then1 to those who would incite whole streets of ,american towns to become florally beautiful1 formal gardening seems hardly the sort to recommend4 ,about the palatial dwellings of men of princely revenue it may be enchanting4 ,there it appears quite in place4 ,for with all its exquisite artificiality it still is nearer to nature than the stately edifice it surrounds and adorns4 ,but for any less costly homes it costs too much4 ,it is expensive in its first outlay and it demands constantly the greatest care and the highest skill4 ,our ordinary ,american life is too busy for it unless the ground is quite handed over to the hired professional and openly betrays itself as that very unsatisfying thing1 a gardener's garden4 ,illustration3 444 until the house itself seems as naturally 444 to grow up out of the garden as the high keynote rises at the end of a lady's song4 ,on the right of this picture you may see the piers of one of the front gates of ,my ,own ,acre standing under ,henry ,ward ,beecher's elm4 ,the urn forms surmounting them are of concrete1 and the urns are cast from earlier forms in wood1 which were a gift from ,henry van ,dyke4 ,on the left the tops of the arbor vit and a magnolia are bending in the wind4 ,our ordinary ,american life is also too near nature for the formal garden to come in between4 ,unless our formal gardening is of some inexpensive sort our modest dwelling-houses give us an anticlimax1 and there is no inexpensive sort of formal gardening4 ,except in the far south our ,american climate expatriates it4 ,a very good practical rule would be for none of us to venture upon such gardening until he is well able to keep up an adequate greenhouse4 ,a formal garden without a greenhouse or two--or three--is a glorious army on a war footing1 but without a base of supplies4 ,it is largely his greenhouses which make the public gardener and the commercial florist so misleading an example for the cottager to follow in his private gardening4 ,to be beautiful1 formal gardening requires stately proportions4 ,without these it is almost certain to be petty and frivolous4 ,in the tiny gardens of ,british and ,european peasants1 it is true1 a certain formality of design is often practised with pleasing success2 but these gardens are a by-product of peasant toil1 and in ,america we have no joy in contemplating an ,american home limited to the aspirations of peasant life4 ,in such gardening there is a constraint1 a lack of natural freedom1 a distance from nature1 and a certain contented subserviency1 which makes it--however fortunate it may be under other social conditions--wholly unfit to express the buoyant1 not to say exuberant1 complacencies of the ,american home4 ,for these we want1 what we have not yet quite evolved1 the ,american garden4 ,when this comes it must come1 of course1 unconsciously2 but we may be sure it will not be much like the gardens of any politically shut-in people4 ,no1 not even of those supreme artists in gardening1 the ,japanese4 ,it will express the traits of our ,american domestic life2 our strong individuality and self-assurance1 our sense of unguarded security1 our affability and unexclusiveness and our dislike to high-walled privacy4 ,if we would hasten its day we must make way for it along the lines of these traits4 ,on the other hand1 if in following these lines we can contrive to adhere faithfully to the worldwide laws of all true art1 who knows but our very gardening may tend to correct more than one shortcoming or excess in our national character8 ,in our ,northampton experiment it has been our conviction from the beginning that for a private garden to be what it should be--to have a happy individuality--a countenance of its own--one worthy to be its own--it must in some practical way be the fruit of its householder's own spirit and not merely of some hired gardener's4 ,if one can employ a landscape-architect1 all very well2 but the most of us cannot1 and after all1 the true landscape-architect1 the artist gardener1 works on this principle and seeks to convey into every garden distinctively the soul of the household for which it springs and flowers4 ,since when it grows and smells1 ,i swear1 ,not of itself but thee4 ,few ,american householders1 however1 have any enthusiasm for this theory1 which many would call high-strung1 and as we in ,northampton cannot undertake to counsel and direct our neighbors' hired helps1 we enroll in the main branch of our competition only those who garden for themselves and hire no labor4 ,to such the twenty-one prizes1 ranging from two dollars and a half up to fifteen dollars1 are a strong incentive1 and by such the advice of visiting committees is eagerly sought and followed4 ,the public educative value of the movement is probably largest under these limitations1 for in this way we show what beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds and with the least outlay4 ,its private educative value1 too1 is probably largest thus1 because thus we disseminate as a home delight a practical knowledge of sthetic principles among those who may at any time find it expedient to become wage-earning gardeners on the home grounds of the well-to-do4 ,illustration3 ,beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds4 ,this is half of a back yard1 the whole of which is equally handsome4 ,the place to which it belongs took a capital prize in the ,carnegie ,flower ,garden ,competition4 ,illustration3 ,muffle your architectural angles in foliage and bloom4 ,an invisible fault of this planting is that it was set too close to the building and tended to give an impression1 probably groundless1 of promoting dampness4 ,also it was an inconvenience to mechanics in painting or repairing4 ,the competing gardens being kept wholly without hired labor1 of course our constant advice to all contestants is to shun formal gardening4 ,it is a pity that in nearly all our cities and towns the most notable examples of gardening are found in the parks1 boulevards1 and cemeteries4 ,by these flaring displays thousands of modest cottagers who might easily provide1 on their small scale1 lovely gardens about their dwellings at virtually no cost and with no burdensome care1 get a notion that this1 and this only1 is artistic gardening and hence that a home garden for oneself would be too expensive and troublesome to be thought of4 ,on the other hand1 a few are tempted to mimic them on a petty scale1 and so spoil their little grass-plots and amuse1 without entertaining1 their not more tasteful but only less aspiring neighbors4 ,in ,northampton1 in our ,carnegie prize contest--so called for a very sufficient and pleasant reason--our counsel is to avoid all mimicry in gardening as we would avoid it in speech or in gait4 ,sometimes we do not mind being repetitious4 ,in gardening we say--as if we had never said it before--almost the only thing which costs unduly--in money or in mortification--is for one to try to give himself somebody else's garden6 ,often we say this twice to the same person4 ,one of the reasons we give against it is that it leads to toy gardening1 and toy gardening is of all sorts the most pitiful and ridiculous4 ,no true art1 we say1 can tolerate any make-believe which is not in some way finer than the reality it simulates4 ,in other words1 imitation should always be in the nature of an amiable condescension4 ,whatever falseness1 pretension or even mere frailty or smallness1 suggests to the eye the ineffectuality of a toy is out of place in any sort of gardening4 ,we do not actually speak all this1 but we imply it1 and we often find that the mere utterance of the one word1 toy gardening1 has a magical effect to suggest all the rest and to overwhelm with contrition the bad taste and frivolity of many a misguided attempt at adornment4 ,at that word of exorcism joints of cerulean sewer-pipe crested with scarlet geraniums1 rows of whited cobbles along the walk or drive like a cannibal's skulls around his hut1 purple paint-kegs of petunias on the scanty door-steps1 crimson wash-kettles of verbenas1 ant-hill rockeries1 and well-sweeps and curbs where no wells are1 steal modestly and forever into oblivion4 ,now1 when we so preach we try also to make it very plain that there is not one set of rules for gardening on a small scale of expense in a small piece of ground1 and another set for gardening on a larger scale4 ,for of course the very thing which makes the small garden different from the large1 the rich man's from the poor man's1 the ,scotch or ,italian peasant's from the ,american mechanic's1 or the public garden from the private1 is the universal and immutable oneness of the great canons of art4 ,one of our competitors1 having honestly purged her soul of every impulse she may ever have had to mimic the gardening of the cemeteries1 planted her dooryard with a trueness of art which made it the joy of all beholders4 ,only then was it that a passing admirer stopped and cried3 ,upon me soul1 ,mrs4 ,anonyma1 yir gyairden looks joost loike a pooblic pairk6 ,he meant--without knowing it--that the spot was lovely for not trying to look the least bit like a public park1 and he was right4 ,she had kept what it would be well for the public gardeners to keep much better than some of them do--the ,moral ,law of ,gardening4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there is a moral law of gardening4 ,no garden should ever tell a lie4 ,no garden should ever put on any false pretence4 ,no garden should ever break a promise4 ,to the present reader these proclamations may seem very trite2 it may seem very trite to say that if anything in or of a garden is meant for adornment1 it must adorn2 but we have to say such things to many who do not know what trite means--who think it is something you buy from the butcher4 ,a thing meant for adornment1 we tell them1 must so truly and sufficiently adorn as to be worth all the room and attention it takes up4 ,thou shalt not let anything in thy garden take away thy guest's attention without repaying him for it2 it is stealing4 ,a lady1 not in our competition but one of its most valued patronesses1 lately proposed to herself to place in the centre of a wide1 oval lawn a sun-dial and to have four paths cross the grass and meet there4 ,but on reflection the query came to her-- ,in my unformal garden of simplest grove and sward will a sun-dial--posing in an office it never performed there1 and will never again be needed for anywhere--a cabinet relic now--will a posed sun-dial be interesting enough when it is arrived at to justify a special journey and four kept-up paths which cut my beautiful grass-plot into quarters8 ,with that she changed her mind--a thing the good gardener must often do--and appointed the dial to a place where one comes upon it quite incidentally while moving from one main feature of the grounds to another4 ,it is now a pleasing1 mild surprise instead of a tame fulfilment of a showy promise2 pleasing1 after all1 it must1 however1 be admitted1 to the toy-loving spirit1 since the sun-dial has long been1 and henceforth ever will be1 an utterly useless thing in a garden1 only true to art when it stands in an old garden1 a genuine historical survival of its day of true utility4 ,only in such a case does the sun-dial belong to the good morals of gardening4 ,but maybe this is an overstrict rule for the majority of us who are much too fond of embellishments and display--the rouge and powder of high art4 ,on the other hand1 we go to quite as much pains to say that though a garden may not lie nor steal1 it may have its concealments2 they are as right as they are valuable4 ,one of the first steps in the making of a garden should be to determine what to hide and how most gracefully to hide it4 ,a garden is a house's garments1 its fig-leaves1 as we may say1 and the garden's concealments1 like its revelations1 ought always to be in the interest of comfort1 dignity1 and charm4 ,we once had a very bumptious member on our board of judges4 ,my dear madam6 he exclaimed to an aspirant for the prizes1 the underpinning of whose dwelling stood out unconcealed by any sprig of floral growth1 your house is barefooted6 ,nobody wants to see your house's underpinning1 any more than he wants to see your own6 ,it is not good to be so brusque about non-penitentiary offences1 but skilful and lovely concealments in gardening were his hobby4 ,to another he whispered1 ,my dear sir1 tell your pretty house her petticoat shows6 and to yet another1 ,take all those shrubs out of the middle of your lawn and 'plant out' with them every feature of your house which would be of no interest to you if the house were not yours4 ,your house's morals may be all right1 but its manners are insufferable1 it talks so much about itself and its family4 ,to a fourth he said3 ,in a gardening sense your house makes too much noise2 you can hear its right angles hit the ground4 ,muffle them6 ,muffle your architectural angles in foliage and bloom4 ,up in the air they may be ever so correct and fine1 but down in the garden and unclothed they are heinous1 heinous6 ,another precept we try to inculcate in our rounds among the gardens1 another commandment in the moral law of gardening1 is that with all a garden's worthy concealments it should never1 and need never1 be frivolous or be lacking in candor4 ,i know an amateur gardener--and the amateur gardener1 like the amateur photographer1 sometimes ranks higher than the professional--who is at this moment altering the location of a sidewalk gate which by an earlier owner was architecturally misplaced for the sole purpose of making a path with curves--and such curves6--instead of a straight and honest one1 from the street to the kitchen4 ,when a path is sent on a plain business errand it should never loaf4 ,and yet those lines of a garden's layout which are designed not for business but for pleasure1 should never behave as though they were on business2 they should loiter just enough to make their guests feel at ease1 while not enough to waste time4 ,how like a perfect lady1 or a perfect gentleman1 is--however humble or exalted its rank--a garden with courtly manners6 ,as to manners1 our incipient ,american garden has already developed one trait which distinguishes it from those beyond the ,atlantic4 ,it is a habit which reminds one of what somebody has lately said about ,americans themselves3 that1 whoever they are and whatever their manners may be1 they have this to their credit1 that they unfailingly desire and propose to be polite4 ,the thing we are hinting at is our ,american gardens' excessive openness4 ,our people have1 or until just now had1 almost abolished the fence and the hedge4 ,a gard1 yard1 garth1 garden1 used to mean an enclosure1 a close1 and implied a privacy to its owner superior to any he enjoyed outside of it4 ,but now that we no longer have any military need of privacy we are tempted--are we not8--to overlook its spiritual value4 ,we seem to enjoy publicity better4 ,in our ,american eagerness to publish everything for everybody and to everybody1 we have published our gardens--published them in paper bindings2 that is to say1 with their boundaries visible only on maps filed with the ,registrar of ,deeds4 ,foreigners who travel among us complain that we so overdo our good-natured endurance of every public inconvenience that we have made it a national misfortune and are losing our sense of our public rights4 ,this obliteration of private boundaries is an instance4 ,our public spirit and out imperturbability are flattered by it1 but our gardens1 except among the rich1 have become ,american by ceasing to be gardens4 ,i have a neighbor who every year plants a garden of annuals4 ,he has no fence1 but two of his neighbors have each a setter dog4 ,these dogs are rarely confined4 ,one morning ,i saw him put in the seed of his lovely annuals and leave his smoothly raked beds already a pleasant show and a prophecy of delight while yet without a spray of green4 ,an hour later ,i saw those two setter dogs wrestling and sprawling around in joyous circles all over those garden beds4 ,gay1 guiltless pair6 ,what is one to do in such a case1 in a land where everybody is expected to take everything good-naturedly1 and where a fence is sign of a sour temper8 ,of course he can do as others do1 and have no garden4 ,but to have no garden is a distinct poverty in a householder's life1 whether he knows it or not1 and--suppose he very much wants a garden8 ,they were the well-to-do who began this abolition movement against enclosures and ,i have an idea it never would have had a beginning had there prevailed generally1 democratically1 among us a sentiment for real gardening1 and a knowledge of its practical principles2 for with this sentiment and knowledge we should have had that sweet experience of outdoor privacy for lack of which we lose one of the noblest charms of home4 ,the well-to-do started the fashion1 it cost less money to follow than to withstand it and presently the landlords of the poor utilized it4 ,the poor man--the poor woman--needs the protection of a fence to a degree of which the well-to-do know nothing4 ,in the common interest of the whole community1 of any community1 the poor man--the poor woman--ought to have a garden2 but if they are going to have a garden they ought to have a fence4 ,we in ,northampton know scores of poor homes whose tenants strive year after year to establish some floral beauty about them1 and fail for want of enclosures4 ,the neighbors' children1 their dogs1 their cats1 geese1 ducks1 hens--it is useless4 ,many refuse to make the effort2 some1 ,i say1 make it and give it up1 and now and then some one wins a surprising and delightful success4 ,two or three such have taken high prizes in our competition4 ,the two chief things which made their triumph possible were1 first1 an invincible passion for gardening1 and1 second1 poultry-netting4 ,a great new boon to the home gardener they are1 these wire fencings and nettings4 ,with them ever so many things may be done now at a quarter or tenth of what they would once have cost4 ,our old-fashioned fences were sometimes very expensive1 sometimes very perishable1 sometimes both4 ,also they were apt to be very ugly4 ,yet instead of concealing them we made them a display1 while the shrubbery which should have masked them in leaf and bloom stood scattered over the lawn1 each little new bush by itself1 visibly if not audibly saying-- ,you'd scarce expect one of my age---- etc42 the shrubs orphaned1 the lawn destroyed4 ,if the enclosure was a hedge it had to be a tight one or else it did not enclose4 ,now wire netting charms away these embarrassments4 ,your hedge can be as loose as you care to have it1 while your enclosure may be rigidly effective yet be hidden from the eye by undulating fence-rows2 and as we now have definite bounds and corners to plant out1 we do not so often as formerly need to be reminded of ,frederick ,law ,olmsted's favorite maxim1 ,take care of the corners1 and the centres will take care of themselves4 ,illustration3 ,fences masked by shrubbery4 ,one straight line of ,williston ,seminary campus1 the effect of whose iron fence before it was planted out with barberry may be seen in the two panels of it still bare on the extreme right4 ,here there is a word to be added in the interest of home-lovers1 whose tastes we properly expect to find more highly trained than those of the average tenant cottager4 ,our ,american love of spaciousness leads us to fancy that--not to-day or to-morrow1 but somewhere in a near future--we are going to unite our unfenced lawns in a concerted park treatment3 a sort of wee horticultural ,united ,states comprised within a few city squares2 but ever our ,american individualism stands broadly in the way1 and our gardens almost never relate themselves to one another with that intimacy which their absence of boundaries demands in order to take on any special beauty1 nobility1 delightsomeness1 of gardening4 ,the true gardener--who1 if he is reading this1 must be getting very tired of our insistent triteness--carefully keeps in mind the laws of linear and of arial perspective1 no matter how large or small the garden4 ,the relative stature of things1 both actual and prospective2 their breadth2 the breadth or slenderness1 darkness or lightness1 openness or density1 of their foliage2 the splendor or delicacy of their flowers1 whether in size or in color2 the season of their blooming2 the contour of the grounds--all these points must be taken into account in determining where things are to stand and how be grouped4 ,once the fence or hedge was the frame of the picture2 but now our pictures1 on almost any street of unpalatial1 comfortable homes1 touch edge to edge without frames1 and the reason they do not mar one another's effects is that they have no particular effects to be marred1 but lie side by side as undiscordantly as so many string instruments without strings4 ,let us hope for a time when they will rise in insurrection1 resolved to be either parts of a private park1 or each one a whole private garden4 ,in our ,carnegie prize contest nothing yields its judges more pleasure than to inculcate the garden rules of perspective to which we have just referred and to see the blissful complacency of those who successfully carry them out4 ,i have now in my mind's eye a garden to which was awarded the capital prize of #aijc4 ,a cottage of maybe six small rooms crowns a high bank on a corner where two rural streets cross4 ,there are a few square yards of lawn on its front1 and still fewer 7scarcely eight or ten7 on the side next the cross-street1 but on the other two sides there is nearly a quarter of an acre4 ,on these two sides the limits touch other gardens1 and all four sides are entirely without fencing4 ,from the front sward have been taken away a number of good shrubs which once broke it into ineffectual bits1 and these have been grouped against the inward and outward angles of the house4 ,the front porch is garlanded--not smothered--with vines whose flowers are all white1 pink1 blue or light purple4 ,about the base of the porch and of all the house's front1 bloom flowers of these same delicate tints1 the tallest nearest the house1 the lesser at their knees and feet4 ,the edges of the beds--gentle waves that never degenerate to straightness--are thickly bordered with mignonette4 ,not an audacious thing1 not a red blossom nor a strong yellow one1 nor one broad leaf1 nor any mass of dense or dark foliage1 comes into view until one reaches a side of the dwelling4 ,but there at once he finds the second phase in a crescendo of floral colors4 ,the base of the house1 and especially those empty eye-sockets1 the cellar windows1 are veiled in exultant bloom1 yellows predominating4 ,then at the back of the place comes the full chorus1 and red flowers overmaster the yellow1 though the delicate tints with which the scheme began are still present to preserve the dignity and suavity of all--the ladies of the feast4 ,the paths are only one or two and they never turn abruptly and ask you to keep off their corners2 they have none4 ,neither have the flower-beds4 ,they flow wideningly around the hard turnings of the house with the grace of a rivulet4 ,out on the two wider sides of the lawn nothing breaks the smooth green but a well-situated tree or two until the limits of the premises are reached1 and there1 in lines that widen and narrow and widen again and hide the surveyor's angles1 the flowers rise once more in a final burst of innumerable blossoms and splendid hues--a kind of sunset of the garden's own4 ,when this place1 five seasons ago1 first entered the competition1 it could hardly be called a garden at all4 ,yet it was already superior to many rivals4 ,in those days it seemed to us as though scarcely one of our working people in a hundred knew that a garden was anything more than a bed of flowers set down anywhere and anyhow4 ,it was a common experience for us to be led by an unkept path and through a patch of weeds or across an ungrassed dooryard full of rubbish1 in order to reach a so-called garden which had never spoken a civil word to the house nor got one from it4 ,now1 the understanding is that every part of the premises1 every outdoor thing on the premises--path1 fence1 truck-patch1 stable1 stable-yard1 hen-yard1 tennis or croquet-court--everything is either a part of the garden or is so reasonably related to it that from whatever point one views the place he beholds a single satisfactory picture4 ,this1 ,i say1 is the understanding4 ,i do not say that even among our prize-winners anybody has yet perfectly attained this1 although a few have come very near it4 ,with these the main surviving drawback is that the artistic effect is each season so long coming and passes away so soon--cometh up as a flower and presently has withered4 ,one of our most gifted literary critics a while ago pointed out the poetic charm of evanescence2 pointed it out more plainly1 ,i fancy1 than it has ever been shown before4 ,but evanescence has this poetic charm chiefly in nature1 almost never in art4 ,the transitoriness of a sunset glory1 or of human life1 is rife with poetic pathos because it is a transitoriness which cannot be helped4 ,therein lay the charm of that poetic wonder and marvel of its day 7#ahic7 the ,columbian ,exposition's ,white ,city2 it was an architectural triumph and glory which we could not have except on condition that it should vanish with the swiftness of an aurora4 ,even so1 there would have been little poetry in its evanescence if1 through bad workmanship or any obvious folly1 it had failed to fulfil the transient purpose for which it was erected4 ,the only poetic evanescence is the evanescence that is inevitable4 ,an unnecessary evanescence in things we make is bad art4 ,if ,i remember the story correctly1 it was to a ,roman lady that ,benvenuto ,cellini took the exquisite waxen model of some piece of goldsmithing she had commissioned him to execute for her4 ,so delighted was she with this mere model that she longed to keep it and called it the perfection of art1 or some such word4 ,but ,benvenuto said1 ,no1 he could not claim for it the high name of art until he should have reproduced it in gold1 that being the most worthy material in which it would endure the use for which it was designed4 ,unless the great ,italian was in error1 then1 a garden ought not to be so largely made up of plants which perish with the summer as to be1 at their death1 no longer a garden4 ,said that harsh-spoken judge whom we have already once or twice quoted--that shepherd's-dog of a judge--at one of the annual bestowals of our ,carnegie garden prizes3 ,almost any planting about the base of a building1 fence or wall is better than none2 but for this purpose shrubs are far better than annual flowers4 ,annuals do not sufficiently mask the hard1 offensive right-angles of the structure's corners or of the line whence it starts up from the ground4 ,and even if sometimes they do1 they take so long to grow enough to do it1 and are so soon gone with the first cold blast1 that the things they are to hide are for the most of the year not hidden4 ,besides which1 even at their best moments1 when undoubtedly they are very beautiful1 they have not a sufficiently substantial look to be good company for the solid structure they are set against4 ,sweetly1 modestly1 yet obstinately1 they confess to every passer-by that they did not come1 but were put there and were put there only last spring4 ,shrubs1 contrariwise1 give a feeling that they have sprung and grown there in the course of nature and of the years1 and so convey to the house what so many ,american homes stand in want of--a quiet air of being long married and a mother of growing children4 ,flowering shrubs of well-chosen kinds are in leaf two-thirds of the year1 and their leafless branches and twigs are a pleasing relief to the structure's cold nakedness even through the winter4 ,i have seen a house1 whose mistress was too exclusively fond of annuals1 stand waiting for its shoes and stockings from ,october clear round to ,august1 and then barefooted again in ,october4 ,in such gardening there is too much of love's labor lost4 ,if one's grounds are so small that there is no better place for the annuals they can be planted against the shrubs1 as the shrubs are planted against the building or fence4 ,at any rate they should never be bedded out in the midst of the lawn1 and quite as emphatically they should never1 alone1 be set to mark the boundary lines of a property4 ,illustration3 ,after the first frost annual plantings cease to be attractive4 ,illustration3 ,shrubbery versus annuals4 ,the contrast in these two pictures is between two small street plantings standing in sight of each other1 one of annuals with a decorative effect and lasting three months1 the other with shrubberies and lasting nine months4 ,it is hoped these sayings1 quoted or otherwise1 may seem the more in place here because they contemplate the aspects likely to characterize the ,american garden whenever that garden fully arrives4 ,we like largeness4 ,there are many other qualities to desire1 and to desire even more2 but if we give them also the liking we truly owe them it is right for us to like largeness4 ,certainly it is better to like largeness even for itself1 rather than smallness for itself4 ,especially is it right that we should like our gardens to look as large as we can make them appear4 ,our countless lawns1 naked clear up into their rigid corners and to their dividing lines1 are naked in revolt against the earlier fashion of spotting them over with shrubs1 the easiest as well as the worst way of making a place look small4 ,but a naked lawn does not make the premises look as large1 nor does it look as large itself1 as it will if planted in the manner we venture to commend to our ,northampton prize-seekers4 ,between any two points a line of shrubbery swinging in and out in strong1 graceful undulations appears much longer than a straight one1 because it is longer4 ,but1 over and above this1 it makes the distance between the two points seem greater4 ,everybody knows the old boast of the landscape-architects--that they can make one piece of ground look twice as large as another of the same measure1 however small1 by merely grading and planting the two on contrary schemes4 ,the present writer knows one small street in his town1 a street of fair dwellings1 on which every lawn is diminished to the eye by faulty grading4 ,illustration3 ,shrubs are better than annuals for masking right angles4 ,south ,hall1 ,williston ,seminary4 7,see ,where to ,plant ,what47 ,illustration3 444 a line of shrubbery swinging in and out in strong1 graceful undulations4 ,the straight planting on this picture's left masks the back yards of three neighbors1 and gives them a privacy as well as ,my ,own ,acre4 ,the curved planting shows but one of three bends4 ,it was here that ,i first made the mistake of planting a sinuous alley4 7,see ,my ,own ,acre1 p4 #cd47 ,for this he has no occasion to make himself responsible but there are certain empty lots not far from him for whose aspect he is answerable1 having graded them himself 7before he knew how74 ,he has repeatedly heard their depth estimated at ninety feet1 never at more4 ,in fact it is one hundred and thirty-nine4 ,however1 he has somewhat to do also with a garden whose grading was quite as bad--identical1 indeed--whose fault has been covered up and its depth made to seem actually greater than it is1 entirely by a corrective planting of its shrubbery4 ,one of the happiest things about gardening is that when it is bad you can always--you and time--you and year after next--make it good4 ,it is very easy to think of the plants1 beds and paths of a garden as things which1 being once placed1 must stay where they are2 but it is shortsighted and it is fatal to effective gardening4 ,we should look upon the arrangement of things in our garden very much as a housekeeper looks on the arrangement of the furniture in her house4 ,except buildings1 pavements and great trees--and not always excepting the trees--we should regard nothing in it as permanent architecture but only as furnishment and decoration4 ,at favorable moments you will make whatever rearrangement may seem to you good4 ,a shrub's mere being in a certain place is no final reason that it should stay there2 a shrub or a dozen shrubs--next spring or fall you may transplant them4 ,a shrub1 or even a tree1 may belong where it is this season1 and the next and the next2 and yet in the fourth year1 because of its excessive growth1 of the more desired growth of something else1 or of some rearrangement of other things1 that spot may be no longer the best place for it4 ,very few shrubs are injured by careful and seasonable1 even though repeated1 transplanting4 ,many are benefited by one or another effect of the process3 by the root pruning they get1 by the division1 by the change of soil1 by change of exposure or even by backset in growth4 ,transplanting is part of a garden's good discipline4 ,it is almost as necessary to the best results as pruning--on which grave subject there is no room to speak here4 ,the owner even of an ,american garden should rule his garden1 not be ruled by it4 ,yet he should rule without oppression1 and it will not be truly ,american if it fails to show at a glance that it is not overgardened4 ,thus do we propose to exhort our next season's competitors as this fall and winter they gather at our projected indoor garden-talks1 or as we go among them to offer counsel concerning their grounds plans for next spring4 ,and we hope not to omit to say1 as we had almost omitted to say here1 in behalf of the kind of garden we preach1 that shrubs1 the most of them1 require no great enrichment of the soil--an important consideration4 ,and we shall take much care to recommend the perusal of books on gardening4 ,once this gentle art was largely kept a close secret of craftsmen2 but now all that can be put into books is in books1 and the books are non-technical1 brief and inexpensive2 or if voluminous and costly1 as some of the best needs must be1 are in the public libraries4 ,in their pages are a host of facts 7indexed67 which once had to be burdensomely remembered4 ,for one preoccupied with other cares--as every amateur gardener ought to be--these books are no mean part of his equipment2 they are as necessary to his best gardening as the dictionary to his best ,english4 ,what a daily1 hourly1 unfailing wonder are the modern opportunities and facilities by which we are surrounded6 ,if the present reader and the present writer1 and maybe a few others1 will but respond to them worthily1 who knows but we may ourselves live to see1 and to see as democratically common as telephones and electric cars1 the ,american garden8 ,of course there is ever and ever so much more to be said about it1 and the present writer is not at all weary2 but he hears his reader's clock telling the hour and feels very sure it is correct4 ,,where ,,to ,,plant ,,what ,often one's hands are too heavily veneered with garden loam for him to go to his books to verify a quotation4 ,it was the great ,jefferson1 was it not1 who laid into the foundations of ,american democracy the imperishable maxim that ,that gardening is best which gardens the least8 ,my rendition of it may be more a parody than a quotation but1 whatever its inaccuracy1 to me it still sounds ,jeffersonian--,joseph ,jeffersonian4 ,whether we read it garden or govern1 it has this fine mark of a masterful utterance1 that it makes no perceptible effort to protect itself against the caviller or the simpleton2 from men1 for instance1 who would interpret it as meaning that the only perfect government1 or gardening1 is none at all4 ,speaking from the point of view of a garden-lover1 ,i suppose the true signification is that the best government is the government which procures and preserves the noblest happiness of the community with the least enthralment of the individual4 ,now1 ,i hope that as world-citizens and even as ,americans we may bear in mind that1 while this maxim may be wholly true1 it is not therefore the whole truth4 ,what maxim is8 ,let us ever keep a sweet1 self-respecting modesty with which to confront and consort with those who see the science of government1 or art of gardening1 from the standpoint of some other equally true fraction of the whole truth4 ,all we need here maintain for our ,jeffersonian maxim is that its wide domination in ,american sentiment explains the larger part of all the merits and faults of ,american government--and ,american gardening4 ,it accounts for nearly all our ,american laws and ordinances1 manners1 customs1 and whims1 and in the great discussion of ,where to ,plant ,what 7in ,america7 no one need hope to prevail who does not recognize that this high principle of ,american democracy is the best rule for ,american gardening4 ,that gardening is best1 for most ,americans1 which best ministers to man's felicity with least disturbance of nature's freedom4 ,hence the initial question--a question which every amateur gardener must answer for himself4 ,how much subserviency of nature to art and utility is really necessary to my own and my friends' and neighbors' best delight8 ,for--be not deceived--however enraptured of wild nature you may be1 you do and must require of her some subserviency close about your own dwelling4 ,you cannot there persistently enjoy the wolf and the panther1 the muskrat1 buzzard1 gopher1 rattlesnake1 poison-ivy and skunk in full swing1 as it were4 ,how much1 then1 of nature's subserviency does the range of your tastes demand8 ,also1 how much will your purse allow8 ,for it is as true in gardening as in statecraft that1 your government being once genuinely established1 the more of it you have1 the more you must pay for it4 ,in gardening1 as in government1 the cost of the scheme is not in proportion to the goodness or badness of its art1 but to its intensity4 ,this is why the general and very sane inclination of our ,american preferences is away from that intense sort of gardening called formal1 and toward that rather unfairly termed informal method which here1 at least1 ,i should like to distinguish as free-line gardening4 ,a free people who govern leniently will garden leniently4 ,their gardening will not be a vexing tax upon themselves1 upon others1 or upon the garden4 ,whatever freedom it takes away from themselves or others or the garden will be no more than is required for the noblest delight2 and whatever freedom remains untaken1 such gardening will help everybody to exercise and enjoy4 ,the garden of free lines1 provided only it be a real garden under a real government1 is1 to my eye1 an angel's protest against every species and degree of tyranny and oppression1 and such a garden1 however small or extensive1 will contain a large proportion of flowering shrubbery4 ,because a garden should not1 any more than my lady's face1 have all its features--nose1 eyes1 ears1 lips--of one size8 ,no1 that is true of all gardening alike2 but because with flowering shrubbery our gardening can be more lenient than with annuals alone1 or with only herbaceous plants and evergreens4 ,illustration3 ,however enraptured of wild nature you may be1 you do and must require of her some subserviency about your own dwelling4 ,a front view of the three older buildings of ,williston ,seminary4 ,so1 then1 our problem1 ,where to ,plant ,what1 may become for a moment1 ,where to ,plant ,shrubbery2 and the response of the free-line garden will be1 of course1 ,remember1 concerning each separate shrub1 that he or she--or it1 if you really prefer the neuter--is your guest1 and plant him or her or it where it will best enjoy itself1 while promoting the whole company's joy4 ,before it has arrived in the garden1 therefore1 learn--and carefully consider--its likes and dislikes1 habits1 manners and accomplishments and its friendly or possibly unfriendly relations with your other guests4 ,this done1 determine between whom and whom you will seat it2 between what and what you will plant it1 that is1 so as to draw it out1 as we say of diffident or reticent persons2 or to use it for drawing out others of less social address4 ,but how many a lovely shrub has arrived where it was urgently invited1 and found that its host or hostess1 or both1 had actually forgotten its name6 ,did not know how to introduce it to any fellow guest1 or whether it loved sun or shade1 loam1 peat1 clay1 leaf-mould or sand1 wetness or dryness2 and yet should have found all that out in the proper blue-book 7horticultural dictionary7 before inviting the poor mortified guest at all4 ,oh1 pray be seated--anywhere4 ,plant yourself alone in the middle4 ,this is ,liberty ,garden4 ,it is no such thing1 says the tear-bedewed beauty to herself2 it's ,anarchy ,garden4 ,yet1 like the lady she is1 she stays where she is put1 and gets along surprisingly well4 ,new ,england calls ,northampton one of her most beautiful towns4 ,but its beauty lies in the natural landscape in and around it1 in the rise1 fall1 and swing of the seat on which it sits1 the graceful curving of its streets1 the noble spread of its great elms and maples1 the green and blue openness of grounds everywhere about its modest homes and its highly picturesque outlook upon distant hills and mountains and intervening meadows and fields1 with the ,connecticut winding through4 ,its architecture is in three or four instances admirable though not extraordinary1 and1 as in almost every town in our vast ,america1 there are hardly five householders in it who are really skilled flower-gardeners1 either professional or amateur4 ,illustration3 ,plant it where it will best enjoy itself4 ,these wild roses are in two clumps with a six-foot open way between them4 ,they are a wild rose 7,rosa ,arkansana7 not much in use but worthy of more attention1 as indeed all the wild roses are4 ,the sunlit tree farthest on the right is ,sol ,smith ,russell's linden4 ,as the present century was coming in1 however1 the opportunity1 through private flower-gardening1 to double or quadruple the town's beauty and to do it without great trouble or expense1 yet with great individual delight and social pleasure1 came to the lively notice of a number of us4 ,it is1 then1 for the promotion of this object throughout all our bounds1 and not for the perfection of the art for its own sake1 that we maintain this competition and award these ,carnegie prizes4 ,hence certain features of our method the value and necessity of which might not be clear to the casual inquirer without this explanation4 ,may ,i repeat it8 ,not to reward two or three persons yearly for reaching some dizzy peak of art unattainable by ordinary taste and skill1 nor to reward one part of the town or one element of its people for gardening better than another1 nor to promote the production of individual plants or flowers of extraordinary splendor1 nor even to incite children to raise patches of flowers1 is our design2 but to make the modest and democratic art of ,where to ,plant ,what 7an art1 nevertheless1 quite beyond the grasp of children7 so well known and so valued that its practical adoption shall overrun the whole town4 ,to this end we have divided our field into seven districts1 in each of which the number of gardens is about the same4 ,in each of these seven districts only three prizes 7out of twenty-one7 may be taken in any one season4 ,consequently three prizes must fall to each district every year4 ,yet the best garden of all still carries off the capital prize1 the second-best may win the second1 and cannot take a lower than the third1 and the lowest awards go into the district showing the poorest results4 ,even this plan is so modified as further to stimulate those who strive against odds of location or conditions1 for no district is allowed to receive two prizes consecutive in the list4 ,the second prize cannot be bestowed in the same district in which the first is being awarded1 though the third can4 ,the third cannot go into the same district as the second1 though the fourth may4 ,and so on to the twenty-first4 ,moreover1 a garden showing much improvement over the previous season may take a prize1 as against a better garden which shows no such improvement4 ,also no garden can take the capital prize twice nor ever take a prize not higher than it has taken before4 ,the twenty-one prizes are for those who hire no help in their gardening2 two others are for those who reserve the liberty to employ help1 and still another two are exclusively for previous winners of the capital prize1 competing among themselves4 ,in each of the five districts a committee of ladies visits the competing gardens1 inspecting1 advising1 encouraging1 sometimes learning more than they teach1 and reporting to headquarters1 the ,people's ,institute4 ,at these headquarters1 on two acres of ground in the heart of the city1 we have brought gradually into shape1 on a plan furnished by ,frederick ,law ,olmsted's ,sons1 ,landscape ,architects1 of ,boston 7,brookline71 a remarkably handsome garden of flowers and shrubbery designed as a model for the guidance of those in the competition who seek to combine artistic beauty with inexpensiveness4 ,from time to time we have given at these headquarters winter courses of lectures on practical flower-gardening4 ,as a result we have improved1 and are still improving1 the aspect of entire streets and are interesting the whole city4 ,but to return to our discussion4 ,here is a short story of two ladies4 ,they are not in our competition1 though among its most ardent well-wishers4 ,a friend had given one of them a bit of green1 woody growth some two feet high and half an inch thick4 ,she had a wee square bit of front grass-plot something larger than a table-cloth1 but certainly not large enough for a game of marbles4 ,in the centre of this bit of grass she planted her friend's gift4 ,then came our other lady1 making a call1 and with her best smile of humorous commendation1 saying3 ,my dear1 you have violated the first rule of gardening4 ,you've planted your bush where you wanted it4 ,the delighted gardener went in the strength of that witticism for forty weeks or at least until some fiend of candor1 a brother1 like as not1 said3 ,yes1 truly you have violated the first rule of gardening1 for you have put your willow-tree--that's what it is--where a minute's real reflection would have told you you'd wish you hadn't4 ,where to ,plant ,what6 ,plant it where you--and your friends--your friends of best gardening taste--will be glad you planted it when all your things are planted4 ,please those who know best1 and so best please yourself4 ,nevertheless1 beware6 ,watch yourself6 ,do so specially when you think you have mastered the whole art4 ,watch even those who indisputably know better than you do1 for everybody makes mistakes which he never would have dreamed he could make4 ,only the other day ,i heard an amateur say to a distinguished professional gardener3 ,did you plant those shrubs of gorgeous flower and broad1 dark leaf out on your street front purely as a matter of artistic taste8 ,i did1 he replied4 ,i wanted to put my best foot foremost4 ,wouldn't you8 ,why should ,i8 asked the amateur4 ,i wouldn't begin a song with my highest note1 nor a game with my strongest card1 nor an address with my most impassioned declaration1 nor a sonnet with its most pregnant line4 ,if ,i should1 where were my climax8 ,certainly the amateur had the best of it4 ,a garden is a discourse4 ,a garden is a play4 ,see with what care both the dramatist and the stage-manager avoid putting the best foot foremost4 ,see how warily they hold back the supreme strength of the four or five act piece for the last act but one4 ,there is a charmingly instructive analogy between a garden and a drama4 ,in each you have preparation1 progress1 climax1 and close4 ,and then1 also1 in each you must have your lesser climaxes leading masterfully up to the supreme one1 and a final quiet one to let gratefully down from the giddy height4 ,in ,northampton nearly all of our hundreds of gardens contesting for prizes are plays of only one or two acts4 ,i mean they have only one or two buildings to garden up to and between and around and away from4 ,yet it is among these one-act plays1 these one-house gardens1 that ,i find the art truth most gracefully emphasized1 that the best foot should not go foremost4 ,in a large garden a false start may be atoned for by better art farther on and in2 but in a small garden1 for mere want of room and the chance to forget1 a bad start spoils all4 ,no1 be the garden a prince's or a cottager's1 the climaxes to be got by superiority of stature1 by darkness and breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far end4 ,even in the one-house garden ,i should like to see the climaxes plural to the extent of two2 one immediately at the back of the house1 the other at the extreme rear of the ground4 ,at the far end of the lot ,i would have the final storm of passion and riot of disclosure1 and then close about the rear of the house there should be the things of supreme richness1 exquisiteness and rarity4 ,this soft-voiced echo answering back out of the inmost heart of the whole demesne gives genuineness of sentiment to the entire scheme4 ,to plant a conflagration of color against the back fence and stop there would be worse than melodramatic4 ,it would be to close the play with a bang1 and even a worthy one-act play does not close with a bang4 ,the back of the lot is not the absolute end of the garden-play4 ,like the stage-play1 the garden-play brings its beholder back at the very last1 by a sweet reversion1 to the point from which it started4 ,the true garden-lover gardens not mainly for the passer-by1 but rather for himself and the friends who come to see him4 ,even when he treads his garden paths alone he is a pleased and welcome visitor to himself1 and shows his garden to himself as to a visitor4 ,hence there is always at last a turning back to the house or to the front entrance1 and this is the play's final lines1 the last grouping of the players1 the relief of all tension and the descent of the curtain4 ,illustration3 444 climaxes to be got by superiority of stature1 by darkness and breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far end4 ,everything in this photograph was planted by the amateur gardener except the pine-trees in perspective4 ,one point farther in this direction and we may give our hard-worked analogy a respite4 ,it is this3 as those who make and present a play take great pains that1 by flashes of revelation to eye and to ear1 the secrets most unguessed by the characters in the piece shall be early revealed to the audience and persistently pressed upon its attention1 so should the planting of a garden be2 that1 as if quite without the gardener's or the garden's knowledge1 always1 to the eye1 nostril or ear1 some clear disclosure of charm still remote may beckon and lure across easy and tempting distances from nook to nook of the small garden1 or from alley to alley and from glade to glade of the large one4 ,where to ,plant ,what8 ,plant it as far away as1 according to the force of its character or the splendor of its charms1 it can stand and beckon back with best advantage for the whole garden4 ,illustration3 ,some clear disclosure of charm still remote may beckon and lure4 ,from a photograph taken on ,my ,own ,acre1 showing how ,i pulled the lawn in under the trees4 ,the big chestnuts in the middle are on the old fence line that stood on the very edge of the precipitously falling ground4 ,all the ground in sight in the picture is a fill4 ,thus we generalize4 ,and as long as one may generalize he is comparatively safe from humiliating criticism4 ,it is only when he begins to name things by name and say what is best for just where1 that he touches the naked eyeball 7or the funny-bone7 of others whose crotchets are not identical with his4 ,yet in ,northampton this is what we have to do1 and since the competitors for our prizes always have the ,where before they are moved to get and place the ,what1 we find our where-and-what problem easiest to handle when we lift it1 so to speak1 by the tail4 ,then it is ,what to ,plant ,where1 and for answer we have made a short list of familiar flowering shrubs best suited to our immediate geographical locality4 ,we name only fourteen and we so describe each as to indicate clearly enough1 without dictating1 whereabouts to put it4 ,we begin3 ,azalea4 ,our common wild azalea is the flowering bush best known as 'swamp honeysuckle4' ,the two azaleas listed here1 ,a4 mollis and the ,ghent varieties1 are of large1 beautiful and luxuriant bloom1 and except the 'swamp honeysuckle' are the only azaleas hardy in western ,massachusetts4 ,mollis is from two to six feet high1 three to six feet broad1 and blooms in ,april and ,may4 ,its blossoms are yellow1 orange or pink1 single or double4 ,its soil may be sandy or peaty1 and moist1 but any good garden soil will serve2 its position partly shaded or in full sunlight4 ,the ,ghents are somewhat taller and not so broad in proportion4 ,they bloom from ,may to ,july1 and their blossoms are white1 yellow1 orange1 pink1 carmine1 or red1 single or double4 ,soil and position about the same as for mollis4 ,berberis4 ,berberis is the barberry1 so well known by its beautiful pendent berries4 ,it is one of the best shrubs to use where a thorny bush is wanted4 ,b4 vulgaris1 the common sort1 and one of the most beautiful1 grows from four to eight feet high1 with a breadth of from three to six feet4 ,b4 ,thunbergii1 or ,thunberg's barberry1 is the well-known ,japanese variety1 a dense1 drooping bush from two to four feet high and somewhat greater breadth4 ,its pale-yellow blossoms come in ,april and ,may1 and its small1 slender1 bright-red berries remain on the spray until spring4 ,a dry soil is the best for it1 though it will grow in any1 and needs little shade or none4 ,b4 purpurea is a variety of vulgaris and is as handsome as the common4 ,it answers to the same description1 except that its foliage is purple1 which makes it very tempting to new gardeners1 but very hard to relate in good artistic taste among the other shrubs of the garden4 ,few small gardens can make good use of purple foliage4 ,deutzia gracilis4 ,the gracilis is one of the most beautiful of all the deutzias4 ,its delicate foliage of rather light green1 its snowy flowers and its somewhat bending form1 make it one of the fairest ornaments of the home grounds4 ,its height is three feet1 its breadth from two to four feet4 ,it blooms in ,may and ,june4 ,its soil may be any well-drained sort1 and its position any slightly sheltered aspect4 ,so we hurry down the alphabet4 ,the list is short for several good reasons1 one being that it is well to give other lists from season to season4 ,no doubt our inaccuracies would distress a botanist or scientific gardener1 but we convey the information1 such as it is1 to our fellow citizens1 and they use it4 ,in the last ten years we have furnished to our amateurs thousands of shrubs and plants1 at the same reduced rates for a few specimens each which we pay for them by the hundred4 ,but of the really good sorts are there shrubs enough1 you ask1 to afford new lists year after year8 ,well1 for the campus of a certain preparatory school for boys1 with the planting of which the present writer had somewhat to do a few years ago1 the list of shrubs set round the bases of four large buildings and several hundred yards of fence numbered seventy-five kinds4 ,to end the chapter1 let us say something about that operation4 ,on a pictorial page or two we give ourselves the pleasure of showing the results of this undertaking2 but first1 both by pictures and by verbal description let me show where we planted what4 ,of course we made sundry mistakes4 ,each thing we did may be vulnerable to criticism1 and our own largest hope is that our results may not fall entirely beneath that sort of compliment4 ,this campus covers some five acres in the midst of a small town4 ,along three of its boundaries old maples and elms1 in ordinary single-file shade-tree lines1 tower and spread4 ,on the fourth line1 the rear bound1 a board fence divides the ground from the very unattractive back yards1 stables and sheds of a number of town residents4 ,the front lies along the main street of the place1 facing the usual shop-row4 ,the entire area has nearly always been grassed4 ,not what an ,englishman would call so1 but turfed in a stuttering fashion1 impetuous and abashed by turns1 and very easy to keep off2 most rank up against the granite underpinnings of the buildings1 and managing somehow to writhe to all the fences1 of which those on the street fronts are of iron4 ,parallel with the front fence and some fifty feet behind it1 three of the institution's buildings stand abreast and about a hundred feet apart4 ,all three are tall1 rectangular three-story piles of old red brick1 on granite foundations1 and full of windows all of one size1 pigeon-house style4 ,the middle one has a fairly good ,greek-pillared porch1 of wood1 on the middle half of its front4 ,illustration3 444 tall1 rectangular1 three-story piles 444 full of windows all of one size1 pigeon-house style4 ,middle ,hall1 ,williston ,seminary1 facing the main street of the town4 ,among these buildings we began our planting4 ,we had drawn1 of course1 a ground plan of the whole place1 to scale1 showing each ground-floor door and window1 so that we might respect its customary or projected use4 ,a great point1 that1 in ,where to ,plant ,what4 ,i once heard of a school whose small boys were accused of wantonly trampling down some newly set shrubs on the playground4 ,well1 demanded one brave urchin1 what made 'em go and plant a lot of bushes right on first base8 ,and no one was ready with an answer1 for there is something morally wrong about any garden that will rob a boy of his rights4 ,with this ground plan before us we decided indoors where to plant what outdoors and calculated arithmetically the number of each sort of shrub we should need for the particular interval we designed that sort to fill4 ,our scheme of arrangement was a crescendo of foliage and flower effects1 beginning on the fronts of the buildings and rising toward their rears1 while at all points making more of foliage than of bloom1 because the bloom shows for only a month or less1 while the leaf remains for seven or more4 ,beginning thus with our quietest note1 the interest of any one looking in1 or coming in1 from the public front is steadily quickened and progressively rewarded1 while the crowning effects at the rear of the buildings are reserved for the crowning moment when the visitor may be said to be fully received4 ,on the other hand1 if the approach is a returning one from the rear of the entire campus1--where stands the institution's only other building1 a large tall-towered gymnasium1 also of red brick1--these superlative effects show out across an open grassy distance of from two hundred to three hundred feet4 ,wherefore--and here at last we venture to bring names of things and their places together--at the fronts of the northernmost and southernmost of these three ,halls we set favorite varieties of white-flowering spireas 7,thunbergia1 sorbifolia1 arguta1 ,van ,houttei71 the pearl-bush 7exochorda71 pink diervillas1 and flowering-almonds4 ,after these1 on the southern side of the southernmost building1 for example1 followed lilacs1 white and purple1 against the masonry1--the white against the red brick1 the lilac tint well away from it1--with tamarisk and kerria outside1 abreast of them1 and then pink and red spireas 7,bumaldi and its dwarf variety1 ,anthony ,waterer74 ,on the other side of the same house we set deutzias 7scabra against the brick-work and ,lemoynei and gracilis outside74 ,in a wing corner1 where melting snows crash down from a roof-valley1 we placed the purple-flowered ,lespedeza penduliflorum1 which each year dies to the ground before the snow-slides come1 yet each ,september blooms from three to four feet high in drooping profusion4 ,then from that angle to the rear corner we put in a mass of pink wild roses4 ,lastly1 on the tall1 doorless1 windowless rear end1 we planted the crimson-rambler rose1 and under it a good hundred of the red rugosas4 ,in the arrangement of these plantings we found ourselves called upon to deal with a very attractive and1 to us1 new phase of our question4 ,the rising progression from front to rear was a matter of course1 but how about the progression at right angles to it2 from building to building1 that is1 of these three so nearly alike in size and dignity8 ,to the passer-by along their ,main ,street front--the admiring passer-by1 as we hope--should there be no augmentation of charm in the direction of his steps8 ,and if there should be1 then where and how ought it to show forth so as to avoid an anticlimax to one passing along the same front from the opposite direction8 ,we promptly saw1--as the reader sees1 no doubt1 before we can tell it1--that what we wanted was two crescendos meeting somewhere near the middle2 a crescendo passing into a diminuendo from whichever end you moved to the other--a swell4 ,we saw that our loud-pedal effect should come upon ,middle ,hall4 ,so there1 on its lucky bit of ,greek porch1 we bestowed the purple wistaria for spring1 and for late summer that fragrant snowdrift1 the clematis paniculata1 so adapted as to festoon and chaplet1 but never to smother1 the ,greek columns4 ,on one of this structure's sides we planted forsythia1 backed closer against the masonry by althas1 with the low and exquisite mahonia 7holly-leafed barberry7 under its outer spread4 ,on the other side of the house we placed1 first1 loniceras 7bush honeysuckles72 next1 azaleas1 in variety and profusion2 then1 toward the rear end1 a mass of hardy hydrangeas 7,hydrangea paniculata grandiflora71 and at the very back of the pile another mass1 of the flowering-quince 7,pyrus japonica71 with the trumpet-creeper 7,tecoma radicans71 to climb out of it4 ,about ,north ,hall1 the third building1 we planted more quietly1 and most quietly on its outer1 its northern1 side where our lateral swell 7rising effect7 begins1 or ends1 according to the direction of your going1 beginning with that modest but pretty bloomer the ,ligustrum ibota1 a perfectly hardy privet more graceful than the ,california 7ovalifolium7 species1 which really has little business in icy ,new ,england away from the seashore4 ,i might have remarked before that nearly all the walls of these three buildings1 as well as the gymnasium on the far side of the campus1 were already adorned with the ,boston ivy 7,ampelopsis ,veitchii74 ,with the plantings thus described1 and with the gymnasium surrounded by yet stronger greenery2 with the back fence masked by willows1 elders and red-stemmed cornus2 and with a number of haphazard footpaths reduced to an equally convenient and far more graceful few1 our scheme stands complete in its first1 but only1 please notice1 its first1 phase4 ,the picture is submitted to your imagination not as it looked the day we ceased planting1 but as we expected it to appear after a season or two1 and as it does look now4 ,at present1 rather tardily1 we have begun to introduce herbaceous flowering perennials1 which we ignored in the first part of our plan1 because herbaceous plants are the flesh and blood and garments of a complete living and breathing garden2 the walls1 shrubs1 trees1 walks and drives are its bones4 ,when this secondary phase has been more fully realized and we have placed bush-clumps and tree-clumps out on the open campus1 and when our hundreds of cottage gardens are shaking off the prison irons of frost1 we hope1 if you cannot do us the honor to be with us bodily1 your spirit may be near1 aiding us on in the conquest of this ever beautiful ,where-to-,plant-,what problem1 which ,i believe would make us a finer and happier nation if it could be expanded to national proportions4 ,,the ,,cottage ,,gardens ,,of ,,northampton ,adam and ,eve1 it is generally conceded1 were precocious4 ,they entered into the cares and joys of adult life at an earlier age than any later human prodigy4 ,we call them the grand old gardener and his wife1 but1 in fact1 they were the youngest gardeners the world has ever seen1 and they really did not give entire satisfaction4 ,how could they without tools8 ,let it pass4 ,the whole allusion is prompted only by the thought that youth does not spontaneously garden4 ,if it was actually necessary that our first parents should begin life as gardeners1 that fully explains why they had to begin it also as adults4 ,youth enjoys the garden1 yes6 but not its making or tending4 ,childhood1 the abecedarian1 may love to plant seeds1 to watch them spring1 grow1 and flower1 and to help them do so2 but that is the merest a-b-c of gardening1 and no more makes him an amateur in the art than spelling words of one letter makes him a poet4 ,one may raise or love flowers for a lifetime1 yet never in any art sense become a gardener4 ,in front of the main building of a public institution which we must presently mention again there is a sloping strip of sward a hundred feet long and some fifteen wide4 ,a florist of fully half a century's experience one day halted beside it and exclaimed to the present writer1 ,only say the word1 and ,i'll set out the 'ole len'th o' that strip in foliage-plants a-spellin' o' the name3 ',people's ,hinstitute6' ,yet that gentle enthusiast advertised himself as a landscape-gardener and got clients4 ,for who was there to tell them or him that he was not one8 ,not only must we confess that youth does not spontaneously garden1 but that our whole ,american civilization is still so lingeringly in its non-gardening youth that only now and then1 here and there1 does it realize that a florist1 whether professional or amateur1 or even a nurseryman1 is not necessarily a constructive gardener1 or that artistic gardening1 however informal1 is nine-tenths constructive4 ,yet particularly because such gardening is so1 and because some of its finest rewards are so slow-coming and long-abiding1 there is no stage of life in which it is so reasonable for man or woman to love and practise the art as when youth is in its first full stature and may garden for itself and not merely for posterity4 ,john1 said his aged father to one of our living poets1 ,i know now how to transplant full-grown trees successfully4 ,do it a long time ago4 ,let the stripling plant the sapling4 ,youth1 however1 and especially our ,american youth1 has his or her excuses1 such as they are4 ,of the garden or the place to be gardened1 ,it's not mine1 he or she warmly says2 it's only my father's1 or my mother's4 ,young man6 ,young maiden6 ,true1 the place1 so pathetically begging to be gardened1 may not be your future home1 may never be your property1 and it is right enough that a feeling for ownership should begin to shape your daily life4 ,but let it not misshape it4 ,you know that ownership is not all of life nor the better half of it1 and it is quite as good for you to give the fact due recognition by gardening early in life as it was for ,adam and ,eve4 ,it is better1 for you can do so in a much more fortunate manner1 having tools and the first pair's warning example4 ,it is better also because you can do what to them was impossible2 you can make gardening a concerted public movement4 ,that is what we have made it in ,northampton1 ,massachusetts1 whose curving streets and ancient elms you may have heard of as making it very garden-like in its mere layout2 many of whose windows1 piazzas1 and hillside lawns look on across the beautiful ,connecticut1 winding broadly among its farmed meadows and vanishing southward through the towering gateway made for or by it millenniums ago between ,mounts ,tom and ,holyoke4 ,there ,smith ,college is1 as well as that ,people's ,institute aforementioned1 and it is through that institute1 one of whose several branches of work is carried on wholly by ,smith ,college students1 that we1 the ,northampton townspeople1 established and maintain another branch1 our concerted gardening4 ,illustration3 ,you can make gardening a concerted public movement4 ,a gathering on ,my ,own ,acre in the interest of the ,flower ,garden ,competition4 ,one evening in ,september a company of several hundred persons gathered in the main hall of the institute's ,carnegie ,house to witness and receive the prize awards of their twelfth annual flower-garden competition4 ,the place was filled4 ,a strong majority of those present were men and women who earn their daily bread with their hands4 ,the whole population of ,northampton is but twenty thousand or so1 and the entire number of its voters hardly exceeds four thousand1 yet there were one thousand and thirteen gardens in the competition1 the gardens of that many homes2 and although children had taken part in the care of many of them1 and now were present to see the prizes go to their winners1 not one was separately a child's garden4 ,by a rule of the contest1 each garden had been required to comprise the entire home lot1 with the dwelling for its dominating feature and the family its spiritual unit4 ,the ceremony of award began with the lowest cash prize and moved steadily up to the second and first1 these two being accompanied by brilliantly illuminated diplomas1 and as each award was bestowed1 the whole gathering of winners and non-winners--for no one could be called a loser--sounded their congratulations by a hearty clapping of hands4 ,they had made the matter a public1 concerted movement1 and were interested in its results and rewards as spiritual proprietors in a common possession much wider than mere personal ownership under the law4 ,this wider sentiment of community1 so valuable to the whole public interest1 was further promoted by the combining of nearly two hundred of these same gardens in neighborhood garden clubs of seven or more gardens each1 every garden in each club directly adjoining another1 and the clubs competing for prizes of so much a garden to the best and second-best clubs4 ,yet none the less for all this1 but much more1 a great majority of the multitude of home gardeners represented by this gathering were enjoying also--each home pair through their own home garden--the pleasures of personal ownership and achievement4 ,many of the prize-winners were young1 but many were gray1 and some were even aged1 yet all alike would have testified that even for age1 and so all the more for youth1 artistic flower-gardening is as self-rewarding a form of unselfish work and as promptly rewarding a mode of waiting on the future as can easily be found2 that there is no more beautifully rewarding way by which youth may ,learn to labor and to wait4 ,maybe that is why ,adam and ,eve were apprenticed to it so very young4 ,it should have been said before that in advance of the award of prizes some very pleasant music and song were given from the platform by a few ,smith ,college girls1 and that then the company were shown stereopticon pictures of a number of their own gardens as they looked during the past summer and as they had looked when1 a few years ago1--although seemingly but yesterday1--their owners began to plan and to plant4 ,the contrasts were amazing and lent great emphasis to the two or three truths we have here dwelt on probably long enough4 ,to wit3 first1 that1 as a rule1 all true gardeners are grown-ups2 second1 that therein lies the finest value of concerted gardening2 third1 that the younger the grown-up the better1 for the very reason that the crowning recompenses of true gardening come surely1 but come late2 and fourth1 that1 nevertheless1 gardening yields a lovely amplitude of immediate rewards4 ,for instance1 this gathering in our ,people's ,institute also1 before the announcement of prizes1 took delight in hearing reported the aggregate of the flowers1 mostly of that season's planting1 distributed by a considerable number of the competitors to the shut-in and the bereaved4 ,this feature of the movement had been begun only the previous year1 and its total was no more than some three thousand dozens of flowers2 but many grateful acknowledgments1 both verbal and written1 prove that it gave solace and joy to many hearts and we may call it a good beginning4 ,a garden should be owned not to be monopolized1 but to be shared1 as a song is owned not to be hushed1 but to be sung2 and the wide giving of its flowers is but one of several ways in which a garden may sing or be sung--for the garden is both song and singer4 ,at any rate it cannot help but be a public benefaction and a public asset1 if only its art be true4 ,hence one of the values of our gardening in ,northampton3 making the gardens so many and so artistically true and good1 it makes the town1 as a whole1 more interesting and pleasing to itself1 and in corresponding degree the better to live in4 ,possibly there may be some further value in telling here how we do it4 ,as soon as signs of spring are plain to the general eye the visiting for enrolment begins4 ,a secretary of the institute sets out to canvass such quarters of the field as have not been apportioned among themselves individually by the ladies composing the committee of volunteer garden visitors4 ,at the same time these ladies begin their calls1 some undertaking more1 some less1 according to each one's willingness or ability4 ,this first round consists merely in enrolling the competitors by name1 street1 and number and in sending these registrations in to the institute4 ,later1 by the same ladies1 the same ground is more or less gone over again in visits of observation1 inquiry and counsel1 and once a month throughout the season the ladies meet together with the president of the institute to report the conditions and sentiments encountered and to plan further work4 ,the importance of these calls is not confined to the advancement of good gardening4 ,they promote fellowship among neighbors and kind feeling between widely parted elements of society4 ,last year this committee made nearly eleven hundred such visits4 ,meanwhile a circular letter has been early mailed to the previous year's competitors1 urging them to re-enroll by post-card4 ,last year hundreds did so4 ,meanwhile1 too1 as soon as the enrolment is completed1 the institute's general secretary begins a tour of official inspection1 and as he is an experienced teacher of his art1 his inspections are expert4 ,his errand is known by the time he is in sight1 and1 as a rule1 the householder joins him in a circuit of the place1 showing achievements1 reciting difficulties and disappointments1 confessing errors1 and taking tactful advice4 ,and what room he finds for tact6 ,he sees a grave-like bed of verbenas defacing the middle of a small greensward--a dab of rouge on a young cheek2 a pert child doing all the talking4 ,whereupon he shrewdly pleads not for the sward but for the flowers1 ,you have those there to show off at their best8 ,yes4 ,don't they do it8 ,not quite4 ,he looks again4 ,nine feet long--five wide4 ,if you'll plant them next year in a foot-wide ribbon under that border of stronger things along your side boundary they'll give you at least forty feet of color instead of nine1 and they'll illuminate your bit of sward instead of eclipsing it4 ,in another garden he says1 ,splendid sunburst of color1 that big tub of geraniums6 and the householder is pleased to admit the fact4 ,if you'd sink the tub into the ground clear down to the rim they'd take up no more room and they'd look natural4 ,besides1 you wouldn't have to water them continually4 ,that's true6 says the householder1 quite in the incredible way of an old-fashioned book4 ,i'll do it6 ,and then1 says the caller1 if you will set it away off on that far corner of the lawn it will shine clear across1 showing everything between here and there1 like a lighthouse across a harbor1 or like a mirror1 which you hang not in your parlor door1 but at the far end of the room4 ,when you come back you shall see it there1 is the reply4 ,sometimes1 yet not often1 a contestant is met who does not want advice1 and who can hardly hide his scorn for book statements and experts4 ,the present writer came upon one last year who could not see what beauty there was in ,john ,smith's garden1 yet we had given him and his wife the capital prize6 ,frequently one finds the house of a competitor fast locked and dumb1 its occupants being at work in some mill or shop4 ,then if the visit is one of official inspection a card stating that fact and dated and signed on the spot is left under the door1 and on its reverse side the returning householder finds printed the following3 ,in marking for merit your whole place is considered your garden4 ,it is marked on four points3 7#a7 ,its layout1 or ground plan2 7#b7 its harmonies--of arrangement as to color of blooms and as to form and size of trees1 shrubs and plants2 7#c7 its condition--as to the neatness and order of everything2 and 7#d7 its duration--from how early in the year to how late it will make a pleasing show4 ,mow your lawn as often as the mower will cut the grass1 but also keep it thoroughly weeded4 ,as a rule1 in laying out your plantings avoid straight lines and hard angles2 the double curve1 or wave line1 is the line of grace4 ,plant all the flowers you wish1 few or many1 but set shrubs at their back to give stronger and more lasting effects when the flowers are out of season as well as while they are in bloom4 ,try to plant so as to make your whole place one single picture of a home1 with the house the chief element and the boundary-lines of the lot the frame4 ,plant on all your lot's boundaries1 plant out the foundation-lines of all its buildings2 but between these plantings keep the space grassed only1 and open4 ,in these house and boundary borders let your chief plantings be shrubs1 and so have a nine months' instead of a three months' garden4 ,the secretary's tour completed and his score of all the gardens tabulated1 a list is drawn from it of the one hundred and fifty best gardens1 and a second circuit of counsel and inspection1 limited to this greatly reduced number1 is made by the president of the institute1 who marks them again on the same four points of merit4 ,these two markings1 averaged1 determine the standing of all prize-winning gardens except the leading four4 ,then the president calls in one professional and one amateur expert1 visits with them as many of the most promising contestants as can be seen in an afternoon's drive1 and with them decides the award of the four highest prizes4 ,illustration3 ,plant on all your lot's boundaries1 plant out the foundation-lines of all its buildings4 ,a secluded back corner of a prize-winner's garden which shows how slight a planting may redeem the homeliness of an old fence4 ,illustration3 ,not chiefly to reward the highest art in gardening1 but to procure its widest and most general dissemination4 ,a cheap apartment row whose landlord had its planting done by the ,people's ,institute4 ,that is all4 ,when we have given two or three lesser items our story is told--for what it is worth4 ,it is well to say we began small2 in our first season1 fifteen years ago1 our whole roll of competitors numbered but sixty4 ,it is the visiting that makes the difference2 last season these visits1 volunteer and official1 were more than thirty-one hundred4 ,another source of our success we believe to be the fact that our prizes are many and the leading ones large--fifteen1 twelve1 nine dollars1 and so on down4 ,prizes and all1 the whole movement costs a yearly cash outlay of less than three hundred dollars2 without the ,people's ,institute at its back it could still be done for five hundred4 ,and now1 this being told in the hope that it may incite others1 and especially youth1 to make experiments like it elsewhere1 to what impulse shall we appeal8 ,will it not suffice if we invoke that adolescent instinct which moves us to merge our individual life--to consolidate it1 as the stock-manipulators say--in the world's one great life1 our celestial selfishness being intuitively assured that our own priceless individuality will gain1 not lose1 thereby8 ,or shall we make our plea to an art impulse8 ,no8 ,is the world already artificial enough8 ,not by half1 although it is full1 crammed1 with the things the long-vanished dead have done for it in every art1 from cameos to shade-trees2 done for it because it was already so fair that1 live long or die soon1 they could not hold themselves back from making it fairer4 ,yet1 all that aside1 is not this concerted gardening precisely such a work that young manhood and womanhood1 however artificial or unartificial1 anywhere1 everywhere1 ,old ,world or newest frontier1 ought to take to naturally8 ,adam and ,eve did1 and they--but we have squeezed ,adam and ,eve dry enough4 ,patriotism6 ,can you imagine a young man or woman without it8 ,and if you are young and a lover of your country1 do you not love its physical aspects1 its rocks and rills1 its woods and templed hills8 ,and if so1 do you love only those parts of it which you never see and the appearance of which you have no power to modify8 ,or do you love the land only and not the people1 the nation1 the government8 ,or1 loving these1 have you no love for the nearest public fraction of it1 your own town and neighbors8 ,why1 then1 your love of the ,stars and ,stripes is the flattest1 silliest idolatry2 so flat and silly it is hardly worth chiding4 ,your patriotism is a patriotism for war only1 and a country with only that kind is never long without war4 ,you see the difference8 ,patriotism for war generalizes4 ,a patriotism for peace particularizes1 localizes4 ,ah1 you do love1 despite all their faults1 your nation1 your government1 your town and townspeople1 else you would not so often scold them6 ,otherwise1 why do you let us call them yours8 ,because they belong to you8 ,no1 because you belong to them4 ,beyond cavil you are your own1 but beyond cavil1 too1 you are theirs2 their purchased possession1 paid for long1 long in advance and sight-unseen4 ,you cannot use a sidewalk1 a street-lamp1 or a post-box1 or slip away into the woods and find them cleared of savages and deadly serpents1 without seeing part of the price paid for you before your great-grandfather was born4 ,so1 then1 loving your town enough to scold it1 you will also serve it6 ,now this we say not so much to be preaching as to bring in a last word descriptive of our ,northampton movement4 ,we do not make that work a mere aggregation of private kindnesses1 but a public business for the promotion of the town in sanitary upkeep1 beauty and civic fellowship4 ,and so our aim is not chiefly to reward the highest art in gardening1 but to procure its widest and most general dissemination4 ,the individual is definitely subordinated to the community's undivided interest4 ,since gardening tends to develop in fortunate sections and to die out in others1 we have laid off our town map in seven parts and made a rule that to each of these shall go three of the prizes4 ,moreover1 no two consecutive prizes can be awarded in any one of these districts4 ,where a competitor takes the capital prize no other can take a higher than the third1 and if two in one district win the first and third prizes no one else there can take a higher than the fifth4 ,so on through to prize twenty-one4 ,still further1 a garden taking any of these prizes can never again take any of them but a higher one1 and those who attain to the capital prize are thenceforth hors concours except to strive for the ,past ,competitors' ,prizes1 first and second4 ,thus the seasons come and go1 the gardens wake1 rise1 rejoice and slumber again2 and because this arrangement is so evidently for the common weal and fellowship first1 and yet leaves personal ownership all its liberties1 rights and delights1 it is cordially accepted of the whole people4 ,and1 lastly1 as a certain dear lady whom we may not more closely specify exclaimed when1 to her glad surprise1 she easily turned the ceremonial golden key which first unlocked the ,carnegie ,house of our ,people's ,institute1 ,it works6 ,,the ,,private ,,garden',s ,,public ,,value ,what its pages are to a book1 a town's private households are to a town4 ,no true home1 standing solitarily apart from the town 7unbound1 as it were7 could be the blessed thing it is were there not so many other houses not standing apart but gathered into villages1 towns and cities4 ,whence comes civilization but from civitas1 the city8 ,and where did civitas get its name1 when city and state were one1 but from citizen8 ,he is not named for the city but the city for him1 and his title meant first the head of a household1 the master of a home4 ,to make a civilization1 great numbers of men must have homes1 must mass them compactly together and must not mass them together on a dead level of equal material equipment but in a confederation of homes of all ranks and conditions4 ,the home is the cornerstone of the state4 ,the town1 the organized assemblage of homes1 is the keystone of civilization's arch4 ,in order to keep our whole civilization moving on and up1 which is the only way for home and town to pay to each other their endless spiral of reciprocal indebtedness1 every home in a town--or state1 for that matter--should be made as truly and fully a home as every wise effort and kind influence of all the other homes can make it4 ,unless it takes part in this effort and influence1 no home1 be it ever so favored1 can realize1 even for itself and in itself1 the finest civilization it might attain4 ,why should it8 ,i believe this is a moral duty1 a debt as real as taxes and very much like them4 ,in our ,people's ,institute over in ,northampton1 ,massachusetts1 this is the a-b-c of all they seek to do3 the individual tutoring1 by college girls and town residents1 of hundreds of young working men and women in whatever these may choose from among a score or so of light studies calculated to refine their aspirations2 the training of young girls1 by paid experts1 in the arts of the home1 from cooking to embroidery2 the training of both sexes in all the social amenities2 and the enlistment of more than a thousand cottage homes in a yearly prize competition4 ,it is particularly of this happy garden contest that ,i wish to say a word or two more4 ,in #aiad it completed its sixteenth season1 but it is modelled on a much older one in the town of ,dunfermline1 ,scotland1 the birthplace of ,mr4 ,andrew ,carnegie1 and it is from the bountiful spirit of that great citizen of two lands that both affairs draw at least one vital element of their existence4 ,we in ,northampton first learned of the ,dunfermline movement in #ahih4 ,we saw at once how strongly such a scheme might promote the general spiritual enrichment of our working people's homes if made one of the functions of our home-culture clubs1 several features of whose work were already from five to ten years old4 ,we proceeded to adopt and adapt the plan1 and had our first competition and award of prizes in #ahih-'ii4 ,like ,dunfermline1 we made our prizes large1 and to this we attribute no small part of our success4 ,when we saw fit to increase their number we increased the total outlay as well1 and at present we award twenty-one prizes a year1 the highest being fifteen dollars1 and one hundred dollars the sum of the whole twenty-one prizes4 ,so we have gained one of our main purposes3 to tempt into the contest the man of the house and thus to stimulate in him that care and pride of his home1 the decline of which1 in the man of the house1 is one of the costliest losses of hard living4 ,one day on their round of inspection our garden judges came to a small house at the edge of the town1 near the top of a hill through which the rustic street cuts its way some twelve or fifteen feet below4 ,the air was pure1 the surroundings green1 the prospect wide and lovely4 ,here was a rare chance for picturesque gardening4 ,although the yard was without a fence there had been some planting of flowers in it4 ,yet it could hardly be called a garden4 ,so destitute was it of any intelligent plan and so uncared for that it seemed almost to have a conscious1 awkward self-contempt4 ,in the flecked shade of a rude trellis of grapes that sheltered a side door two children of the household fell to work with great parade at a small machine1 setting bristles into tooth-brushes for a neighboring factory1 but it was amusingly plain that their labor was spasmodic and capricious4 ,the mother was away on a business errand4 ,the father was present4 ,he had done his day's stint in the cutlery works very early1 and with five hours of sunlight yet before him had no use to make of them but to sit on a bowlder on the crest of the pleasant hill and smoke and whittle4 ,had he been mentally trained he might1 without leaving that stone1 have turned those hours into real living1 communing with nature and his own mind2 but he had1 as half an eye could see1 no developed powers of observation1 reflection or imagination1 and probably1 for sheer want of practice1 could not have fixed his attention on a worthy book through five of its pages4 ,the question that arose in the minds of his visitors comes again here3 what could have been so good to keep idleness from breeding its swarm of evils in his brain and hands--and home--as for somebody1 something1 somehow1 to put it into his head--well--for example--to make a garden8 ,a garden1 we will say1 that should win a prize1 and--even though it failed to win--should render him and his house and household more interesting to himself1 his neighbors and his town4 ,he and his house seemed to be keeping the ,ten ,commandments in a slouching sort of way and we may even suppose they were out of debt--money debt2 yet already they were an unconscious menace to society2 their wage-earning powers had outgrown their wants4 ,outgrown them not because the wages were too high but because their wants were too low2 were only wants of the body1 wants of the barrenest unculture2 the inelastic wants4 ,that is my own invention1 that phrase6 ,the bodily wants of a reptile are elastic4 ,if an alligator or a boa-constrictor catches a dog he can swallow him whole and enjoy that one meal in unriotous bliss for weeks4 ,thereafter if he must put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he can do that for weeks in unriotous patience4 ,in a spring in one of our ,northampton gardens ,i saw a catfish swallow a frog so big that the hind toes stuck out of the devourer's mouth for four days2 but they went in at last1 and the fish1 in his fishy fashion1 from start to finish was happy4 ,he was never demoralized4 ,it is not so with us4 ,we cannot much distend or contract our purely physical needs4 ,especially is any oversupply of them mischievous4 ,they have not the reptilian elasticity4 ,day by day they must have just enough4 ,but the civilized man has spiritual wants and they are as elastic as air4 ,a home is a house well filled with these elastic wants4 ,home-culture is getting such wants into households--not merely into single individuals--that lack them4 ,what makes a man rich8 ,is the term merely comparative8 ,not merely4 ,to be rich is to have1 beyond the demands of our bodily needs1 abundant means to supply our spiritual wants4 ,to possess more material resources than we can or will use or bestow to the spiritual advantage of ourselves and others is to be perilously rich1 whether we belong to a grinders' union in the cutlery works or to a royal family4 ,why is it so often right that a rich college1 for example1 should1 in its money-chest1 feel poor8 ,because it could so easily supply more spiritual wants if it had more money4 ,not low wages will ever make men harmless1 nor high wages make them happy1 nor low nor high save them from a spirit of pauperism or of malignant envy2 but having wages bigger than their bodily wants1 and having spiritual wants numerous and elastic enough to use up the surplus--spiritual wants1 that know both how to suffer need and how to abound1 and to do either without backsliding toward savagery4 ,whoever would help this state of things on1 let him seek at the same time to increase the home's wage-earning power and its spiritual powers to put to fine use the wages earned3 to augment the love of beauty in nature and in art1 the love of truth and knowledge1 the love of achievement and of service1 the love of ,god and of human society1 the ambition to put more into the world than we get out of it4 ,wages will never be too high1 nor the hours of a day's work too many or too few1 which follow that sliding scale4 ,how much our garden contest may do of this sort for that cottage on the hill we have yet to know2 last year was its first in the competition4 ,but it has shown the ambition to enter the lists1 and a number that promised no more at the outset have since won prizes4 ,one such was so beautiful last year that strangers driving by stopped and asked leave to dismount and enjoy a nearer view4 ,illustration3 ,having wages bigger than their bodily wants1 and having spiritual wants numerous and elastic enough to use up the surplus4 ,the owner of this cottage1 who stands on the lawn1 spaded and graded it and grassed it herself1 and by shrubbery plantings about the house's foundation and on the outer boundaries of the grass has so transformed it since this picture was taken as to win one of the highest prizes awarded among more than a thousand competitors4 ,illustration3 ,one such competing garden was so beautiful last year that strangers driving by stopped and asked leave to dismount and enjoy a nearer view4 ,a capital prize-winner's back yard which was a sand bank when he entered the competition4 ,his front yard is still handsomer4 ,a certain garden to which we early awarded a high prize was1 and yet remains1 among the loveliest in ,northampton4 ,its house stands perhaps seventy feet back from the public way and so nearly at one edge of its broad lot that all its exits and entrances are away from that side and toward the garden4 ,a lawn and front bordered on side by loose hedges of ,regel's privet and ,thunberg's barberry and with only one or two slim trees of delicate foliage near its street line1 rises slightly from the sidewalk to the house in a smooth half wave that never sinks below any level it has attained and yet consists of two curves4 7,it takes two curves1 let us say once more1 to make even half of the gentlest wave that can be made1 if you take it from the middle of the crest to the middle of the trough1 and in our ,american gardening thousands of lawns1 especially small front lawns1 are spoiled in their first layout by being sloped in a single curve instead of in two curves bending opposite ways47 ,along a side of this greensward farthest from the boundary to which the house is so closely set are the drive and walk1 in one1 and on the farther side of these1 next the sun1 is the main flower-garden1 half surrounding another and smaller piece of lawn4 ,the dwelling stands endwise to the street and broadside to this expanse of bloom4 ,against its front foundations lies a bed of flowering shrubs which at the corner farthest from the drive swings away along that side's boundary line and borders it with shrubbery down to the street1 the main feature of the group being a luxuriant flowering quince as large as ten ordinary ones and in every springtime a red splendor4 ,but the focus of the gardening scheme is at the southeasterly side entrance of the house4 ,to this the drive comes on unrigorous lines from the street4 ,the walk curves away a few steps earlier to go to the front door but the drive1 passing on1 swings in under the rear corner windows and to the kitchen steps1 veers around by the carriage-house door and so loops back into itself4 ,in this loop1 and all about the bases of the dwelling and carriage-house the flowers rise in dense abundance1 related to one another with clever taste and with a happy care for a procession of bloom uninterrupted throughout the season4 ,straightaway from the side door1 leaving the drive at a right angle1 runs a short arbor of vines4 ,four or five steps to the left of this bower a clump of shrubbery veils the view from the street and in between shrubs and arbor lies a small pool of water flowers and goldfish4 ,on the arbor's right1 in charming privacy1 masked by hollyhocks1 dahlias and other tall-maidenly things1 lie beds of strawberries and lettuce and all the prim ranks and orders of the kitchen garden4 ,words are poor things to paint with2 ,i wish ,i could set forth all in one clear picture3 lawn1 drive1 house1 loop1 lily pond1 bower1 rose-bordered drive again 7as the eye comes back7 and flowers crowding before1 behind and beside you1 some following clear out to the street and beseeching you not to go so soon4 ,such is the garden1 kept without hired labor1 of two soft-handed women2 not beyond criticism in any of its aspects but bearing witness to their love of nature1 of beauty and of home and of their wisdom and skill to exalt and refine them4 ,this competitor early won1 ,i say1 a leading prize1 and in later seasons easily held--still holds--a fine pre-eminence4 ,yet the later prizes fell to others1 because1 while this one had been a beautiful garden for years before the competition began1 they1 rising from much newer and humbler beginnings1 sometimes from very chaos1 showed between one season and the next far greater advances toward artistic excellence4 ,in the very next year a high prize fell to a garden in full sight of this one1 a garden whose makers had caught their inspiration from this one1 and1 copying its art1 had brought forth a charming result out of what our judges described as particularly forlorn conditions4 ,does this seem hardly fair to the first garden8 ,but to spread the gardening contagion and to instigate a wise copying after the right gardeners--these are what our prizes and honors are for4 ,progress first1 perfection afterward1 is our maxim4 ,we value and reward originality1 nevertheless1 and only count it a stronger necessity to see not merely that no talented or happily circumstanced few1 but that not even any one or two fortunate neighborhoods1 shall presently be capturing all the prizes4 ,hence the rules already cited1 which a prompt discovery of this tendency forced upon us4 ,about this copying3 no art is more inoffensively imitated than gardening but unluckily none is more easily1 or more absurdly1 miscopied4 ,a safe way is to copy the gardener rather than the garden4 ,to copy any performance in a way to do it honor we must discern and adapt its art without mimicking its act4 ,to miscopy is far easier--we have only to mimic the act and murder the art4 ,i once heard a man ask an architect if it would not answer to give his plan to the contractor and let him work it out without the architect's supervision4 ,my dear sir1 the architect replied1 you wouldn't know the corpse4 ,i suppose one reason why even the miscopying of gardens provokes so little offence is that the acts it mimics have no art it can murder4 ,mrs4 ,budd sets out her one little high geraingia in the middle of her tiny grass-plat 7probably trimming it to look like a ballet-dancer on one leg74 ,whereupon ,mrs4 ,mudd1 the situation of whose house and grounds is not in the least like her neighbor's1 plants and trims hers the same way and feels sure it has the same effect1 for--why shouldn't it8 ,the prize-winning copyist ,i am telling of copied principles only4 ,to have copied mere performance would have been particularly unlucky1 for though his garden stands within fifty yards of the one from which it drew its inspiration the two are so differently located that the same art principles demand of them very different performances4 ,an old-time lover of gardens whom ,i have to quote at second-hand mentions in contrast gardens to look in upon and gardens to look out from4 ,the garden ,i have described at length is planned to be looked in upon2 most town gardens must be1 of course2 but its competitor across the street1 of which ,i am about to give account1 is an exception4 ,the lot has a very broad front and very little depth--at one side almost none1 at the other barely enough for a small house and a few feet of front yard4 ,why there should be a drive ,i cannot say1 but it is so well taken into the general scheme that to call it to account would be ungenerous4 ,it enters at the narrowest part of the ground1 farthest from the house1 makes a long parabola1 and turns again into the street close beside the dwelling4 ,in the bit of lawn thus marked off1 shrubs have place near the street1 three or four old apple-trees range down the middle1 and along the drive runs a gay border of annual flowers4 ,along the rear side of the drive lies but a narrow strip of turf beyond which the ground drops all at once to another level some thirty feet below4 ,on the right this fall is so abrupt that the only way down to it is by a steep rustic stair4 ,on the left1 behind the house1 the face of the bluff is broken into narrow terraces1 from top to bottom of which1 and well out on the lower level1 the entire space is mantled with the richly burdened trellises of a small vineyard4 ,at the right on this lower ground is a kitchen garden2 beyond it stretch fair meadows too low to build on1 but fruitful in hay and grain2 farther away1 on higher ground1 the town again shows its gables and steeples among its great maples and elms1 and still beyond1 some three miles distant1 the green domes and brown precipices of the ,mount ,holyoke ,range stand across the sky in sharp billows of forest and rock4 ,it seems at times a pity that ,mount ,holyoke and ,mount ,tom cannot themselves know how many modest gardens they are a component part of--the high violin note of3 gardens1 like this one1 to look out from4 ,it stops one's pen for one to find himself using the same phrases for these ,new ,england cottage gardens that famous travellers have used in telling of the gardens of ,italian princes2 yet why should we not1 when the one nature and the one art are mother and godmother of them all8 ,it is a laughing wonder what beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious domicile1 out of what ugliness such beauty can be evoked and at how trivial a cost in money4 ,three years before this garden to look out from won its ,carnegie prize it was for the most part a rubbish heap4 ,let me now tell of one other1 that sprang from conditions still more unlovely because cramped and shut in4 ,it was on the other side of the town from those ,i have been telling of4 ,the house stood broadside to the street and flush with the sidewalk4 ,the front of the lot was only broad enough for the house and an alley hardly four feet wide between the house's end and a high1 tight board fence4 ,the alley led into a small1 square back yard one of whose bounds was the back fence of the house4 ,on a second side was a low1 mossy1 picturesquely old wing-building set at right angles to the larger house1 its doors and windows letting into the yard4 ,a third boundary was the side of one well weathered barn and the back of another1 with a scanty glimpse between them of meadows stretching down to the ,connecticut ,river4 ,the fourth was an open fence marking off a field of riotous weeds4 ,when the tenant mistress of this unpromising spot began to occupy it the yard and alley were a free range for the poultry of the neighborhood1 and its only greenery was two or three haphazard patches of weedy turf4 ,one-fourth of the ground1 in the angle made by the open fence and one of the barns1 had been a hen-yard and was still inclosed within a high wire-netting2 but outside that space every plant she set out had to be protected from the grubbing fowls by four stakes driven down with a hammer4 ,three years afterward she bore off our capital prize in a competition of one hundred gardens4 ,let me tell what the judges found4 ,illustration3 ,beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious domicile4 ,one of a great number of competing cottages whose gardens are handsomer in the rear and out of sight than on the street-front1 though well kept there also4 ,illustration3 ,those who pay no one to dig1 plant or prune for them4 ,the aged owner of this place has hired no help for twenty years4 ,behind her honey-locust hedge a highly kept and handsome flower and shrubbery garden fills the whole house lot4 ,she is a capital prize-winner4 ,out in the street1 at the off side of the alley-gate1 between a rude fence and an electric-railway siding1 in about as much space as would give standing room to one horse and cart1 bloomed--not by right of lease1 but by permission of the railway company--a wealth of annual flowers1 the lowest 7pansies and such like7 at the outer edge1 the tallest against the unsightly fence4 ,this was the prelude4 ,in the alley the fence was clothed with vines2 the windows--of which there were two--were decked with boxes of plumbago--pink1 violet1 white and blue1 and of lady-ferns and maiden-hair4 ,the back yard was a soft1 smooth turf wherever there were not flowers4 ,along the back doors and windows of the house and the low-roofed wing a rough arbor was covered with a vine whose countless blossoms scented the air and feasted the bees1 while its luminous canopy sheltered a rare assemblage of such flowers as bloom and thrive only for those whom they know and trust4 ,but the crowning transformation was out in the open sunlight1 in the space which had been the hen-yard4 ,within it was a holiday throng of the gardening world's best-known and loved gentles and commons1 from roses down to forget-me-nots4 ,its screen of poultry-netting had been kept in place1 and no feature on the premises more charmingly showed that this floral profusion came of no mere greed for abundance or diversity1 but of a true art instinct recognizing the limits of its resources4 ,the garden had to be made a garden to look in upon1 a veritable imprisoned garden2 the question of expense required it to be chiefly of annuals1 and all the structural features of the place called for concealment4 ,these wire nettings did so2 on their outside1 next the grass1 two complete groups of herbaceous things were so disposed as to keep them veiled in bloom throughout the whole warm half of the year4 ,close against them and overpeering their tops were hollyhocks and dahlias2 against these stood at lesser height sweet peas1 asters1 zinnias1 coreopsis and others of like stature2 in front of these were poppies for summer1 marigolds for autumn2 beneath these again were verbenas1 candytuft--all this is sketched from memory1 and ,i recall the winsome effect rather than species and names2 and still below nestled portulaca and periwinkle4 ,i fear the enumeration gives but a harlequin effect2 but the fault of that is surely mine1 for the result was delightful4 ,i have ventured to make report of these two or three gardens1 not as in themselves worthy of a great public's consideration and praise but as happy instances of a fruitage we are gathering among hundreds of homes in a little city where it is proposed to give every home1 if possible1 its utmost value4 ,many other pleasing examples could be cited if further turnings of the kaleidoscope were a real need1 but this slender discourse is as long now as it should be4 ,it seems droll to call grave attention to such humble things in a world so rightly preoccupied with great sciences and high arts1 vast industries1 shining discoveries and international rivalries1 strifes and projects2 yet what are all these for1 at last1 but the simple citizen1 his family and his home1 and for him and them in the cottage as well as in the palace8 ,the poor man's home may shine dimly but it is one of the stars by which civilization must guide its onward course4 ,it may well be supposed that those whose office it is to award the twenty-one prizes of our garden competition among our eleven hundred competitors have an intricate task4 ,yet some of its intricacies add to the pleasure of it4 ,one of these pleasing complications arises from our division of the field of contest into seven parts1 in each of which prizes must be given to three contestants4 ,another comes from our rule that not alone the competitors who show the best gardening are to be rewarded1 but also those who have made the most earnest effort and largest progress toward the best gardening4 ,under this plan one whose work shows a patient and signal progress in the face of many disadvantages may outrank on our prize list a rival whose superior artistic result has been got easily under favoring conditions and reveals no marked advance beyond the season before4 ,after the manner of ,dunfermline again1 our rules are that no gardener by trade and no one who hires help in his garden may compete4 ,any friend may help his friend1 and any one may use all the advice he can get from amateur or professional4 ,children may help in the care of the gardens1 and many do2 but children may not themselves put gardens into the competition4 ,if the head of the house is the gardener-in-chief1 shrewdly argued one of our committee1 the children1 oftener than otherwise1 will garden with him1 or will catch the gardening spirit as they grow up2 but if the children are head-gardeners we shall get only children's gardening4 ,we want to dispel the notion that flower-gardening is only woman's work and child's play4 ,our rule against hired labor sets naturally a maximum limit to the extent of ground a garden may cover4 ,our minimum is but fifty square yards1 including turf1 beds1 and walks1 and it may be of any shape whatever if only it does not leave out any part of the dooryard1 front or rear1 and give it up to neglect and disorder4 ,to the ear even fifty square yards seems extensive1 but really it is very small4 ,it had so formidable a sound when we first named it that one of our most esteemed friends1 pastor of a ,catholic church in that very pretty and thrifty part of ,northampton called for its silk mills ,florence1 generously added two supplementary prizes for gardens under the limit of size4 ,this happy thought had a good effect1 for1 although in the first and second years ,father ,gallon's people took prizes for gardens above the minimum limit in size1 while his own two prizes fell to contestants not in his flock1 yet only in the third year did it become to all of us quite as plain as a pikestaff that fifty square yards are only the one-fiftieth part of fifty yards square1 and that whoever in ,northampton had a dooryard at all had fifty square yards4 ,in #aijc more than two hundred and fifty gardens were already in the contest but every one was large enough to compete for the ,carnegie prizes1 and the kind bestower of the extra ones 7withdrawn as superfluous71 unselfishly ignoring his own large share of credit1 wrote3 ,your gardens have altered the aspect of my parish4 ,such praise is high wages4 ,it is better than to have achieved the very perfection of gardening about any one home4 ,we are not trying to raise the world's standard of the gardening art4 ,our work is for the home and its indwellers2 for the home and the town4 ,our ideal is a town of homes all taking pleasant care of one another4 ,we want to make all neighbors and all homes esthetically interesting to one another1 believing that this will relate them humanely1 morally and politically4 ,we began with those who pay no one to dig1 plant or prune for them1 but soon we went further and ventured to open to gardens kept with hired service an allied competition for a separate list of prizes4 ,in this way we put into motion1 between two elements of our people which there are always more than enough influences to hold sufficiently apart1 a joint pursuit of the same refining delight and so promoted the fellowship of an unconflicting common interest4 ,in degree some of us who use hired help had already obtained this effect4 ,last season3 ,come1 ,i often heard one of our judges say on his rounds1 see my own garden some afternoon2 ,i'll show you all the mistakes ,i've made6 ,and some came1 and exchanged seeds and plants with him4 ,a high civilization1 said an old soldier to me only a few days ago1 must always produce great social inequalities4 ,they are needed mainly by and for those who see no need of them4 ,i admitted that the need is as real1 though not so stern1 as the need of inequalities in military rank4 ,but1 ,i said1 in the military relation you must also vividly keep up1 across all inequalities of rank1 a splendid sentiment of common interest and devotion1 mutual confidence and affection1 or your army will be but a broken weapon1 a sword without a hilt4 ,yes1 he agreed1 and so in civilization2 if it would be of the highest it must draw across its lines of social cleavage the bonds of civic fellowship4 ,it was what ,i had intended to say myself4 ,social selection raises walls between us which we all help to build1 but they need not be ,chinese walls4 ,they need not be so high that civic fellowship1 even at its most feminine stature1 may not look over them every now and then to ask3 ,how does my neighbor's garden grow8 ,it is with this end in view as well as for practical convenience that we have divided our field into seven districts and from our women's council have appointed residents of each to visit1 animate and counsel the contestants of that district4 ,the plan works well4 ,on the other hand1 to prevent the movement1 in any district1 from shrinking into village isolation2 in order to keep the whole town comprised1 and1 as nearly as may be1 to win the whole town's sympathy and participation1 we have made a rule that in whatever district the capital prize is awarded1 the second prize must go to some other district4 ,if we have said this before you may slip it here2 a certain repetitiousness is one part of our policy4 ,a competitor in the district where the capital prize is awarded may take the third prize1 but no one may take the third in the district where the second has been awarded4 ,he may1 however1 be given the fourth4 ,in a word1 no two consecutive prizes can be won in the same district4 ,also1 not more than three prizes of the fifteen may in one season be awarded in any one district4 ,so each district has three prize-winners each year1 and each year the prizes go all over town4 ,again1 no garden may take the same prize two years in succession2 it must take a higher one or else wait over4 ,this prize-garden business is just all right6 said one of the competitors to our general secretary4 ,it gives us good things to say to one another's face instead of bad things at one another's back1 it does6 ,that is a merit we claim for it2 that it operates1 in the most inexpensive way that can be1 to restore the social bond4 ,hard poverty minus village neighborship drives the social relation out of the home and starves out of its victims their spiritual powers to interest and entertain one another1 or even themselves4 ,if something could keep alive the good aspects of village neighborship without disturbing what is good in that more energetic social assortment which follows the expansion of the village into the town or city1 we should have better and fairer towns and cities and a sounder and safer civilization4 ,but it must be something which will give entirely differing social elements good things to say to one another's face instead of bad things at one another's back4 ,we believe our ,northampton garden competition tends to do this4 ,it brings together in neighborly fellowship those whom the discrepancies of social accomplishments would forever hold asunder and it brings them together without forced equality or awkward condescension1 civic partners in that common weal to neglect which is one of the dangers and temptations of the home4 ,two of our committee called one day at a house whose garden seemed to have fallen into its ill condition after a very happy start4 ,its mistress came to the door wearing a heart-weary look4 ,the weather had been very dry1 she said in a melodious ,french accent1 and she had not felt so very well1 and so she had not cared to struggle for a garden1 much less for a prize4 ,but the weather1 suggested her visitors1 had been quite as dry for her competitors1 and few of them had made so fair a beginning4 ,to say nothing of prizes1 was not the garden itself its own reward8 ,she shook her head drearily2 she did not know that she should ever care to garden any more4 ,why8 exclaimed one questioner persuasively1 you didn't talk so when ,i was here last month6 ,no1 was the reply1 but since three weeks ago-- and all at once up came the stifled tears1 filling her great black eyes and coursing down her cheeks unhindered1 ,i los' my baby4 ,the abashed visitors stammered such apologies as they could4 ,they would not have come on this untimely errand could they have known4 ,they begged forgiveness for their slowness to perceive4 ,yet do not wholly1 they presently ventured to urge1 give up your garden4 ,the day may come when the thought that is now so bitter will1 as a memory1 yield some sweetness as well1 and then it may be that the least of bitterness and the most of sweetness will come to you when you are busy among your flowers4 ,it may be1 she sighed1 but with an unconvinced shrug4 ,and still1 before the summer was gone1 the garden sedately1 yet very sweetly1 smiled again and even the visitors ventured back4 ,that was nearly three years ago4 ,only a few weeks since those two were in the company of an accomplished man who by some chance--being a ,frenchman--had met and talked with this mother and her husband4 ,we made a sad bungle there1 said the visitors4 ,do not think it6 he protested4 ,they are your devoted friends4 ,they speak of you with the tenderest regard4 ,moreover1 ,i think they told me that last year-- ,yes1 rejoined one of the visitors1 last year their garden took one of the prizes4 ,,the ,,midwinter ,,gardens ,,of ,,new ,,orleans ,if the following pages might choose their own time and place they would meet their reader not in the trolley-car or on the suburban train1 but in his own home1 comfortably seated4 ,for in order to justify the eulogistic tone of the descriptions which must presently occupy them their first word must be a conciliatory protest against hurry4 ,one reason we ,americans garden so little is that we are so perpetually in haste4 ,the art of gardening is primarily a leisurely and gentle one4 ,and gentility still has some rights4 ,our ,louisiana ,creoles know this1 and at times maintain it far beyond the pales of their evergreen gardens4 ',step lively'8 one of them is said to have amazedly retorted in a ,new ,york street-car4 ,no1 the lady shall not step lively4 ,at yo' leisure1 madame1 entrez6 ,in ,new ,orleans the conductors do not cry ,step lively6 ,right or wrong1 the cars there are not absolutely democratic4 ,gentility really enjoys in them a certain right to be treated gently4 ,if democracy could know its own tyrants it would know that one of them is haste--the haste1 the hurry of the crowd2 that hurry whose cracking whip makes every one a compulsory sharer in it4 ,the street-car conductor1 poor lad1 is not to blame4 ,the fault is ours1 many of us being in such a scramble to buy democracy at any price that1 as if we were belatedly buying railway tickets1 we forget to wait for our change4 ,now one of this tyrant's human forms is a man a part of whose tyranny is to call himself a gardener1 though he knows he is not one1 and the symbol of whose oppression is nothing more or less than that germ enemy of good gardening1 the lawn-mower4 ,you1 if you know the gardening of our average ,american home almost anywhere else1 would see1 yourself1 how true this is1 were you in ,new ,orleans4 ,but you see it beautifully proved not by the presence but by the absence of the tyranny4 ,the lawn-mower is there1 of course2 no one is going to propose that the lawn-mower anywhere be abolished4 ,it is one of our modern marvels of convenience1 a blessed release of countless human backs from countless hours of crouching1 sickle-shaped1 over the sickle4 ,it is not the tyrant1 but only like so many other instruments of beneficent democratic emancipation1 the tyrant's opportunity4 ,a large part of its convenience is expedition1 and expedition is the easiest thing in the world to become vulgarized2 vulgarized it becomes haste1 and haste is the tyrant4 ,such arguing would sound absurdly subtle aimed against the uncloaked1 barefaced tyranny of the street-car conductor1 but the tyranny of the man with the lawn-mower is itself subtle1 masked1 and requires subtlety to unmask it4 ,see how it operates4 ,for so we shall be the better prepared for a generous appreciation of those far ,southern gardens whose beauty has singled them out for our admiration4 ,we know1 of course1 that the formal garden1 by reason of its initial and continuing costliness1 is1 and must remain1 the garden of the wealthy few1 and that the gardening for the great democracy of our land1 the kind that will make the country at large a gardened land1 is informal1 freehand1 ungeometrical gardening4 ,in this sort1 on whatever scale1 whether of the capitalist or of the cottager1 the supreme feature is the lawn2 the lawn-mower puts this feature within the reach of all1 and pretty nearly every ,american householder has1 such as it is1 his bit of ,eden4 ,but just in that happy moment the ,tempter gets in4 ,the garden's mistress or master is beguiled to believe that one may have a garden without the expense of a gardener and at the same time without any gardening knowledge4 ,the stable-boy1 or the man-of-all-work1 or the cook1 or the cottager himself1 pushes the lawn-mower1 and except for green grass1 or changeable brown and green1 their bit of ,eden is naked and is not ashamed4 ,or if ashamed1 certain other beguilements1 other masked democratic tyrannies1 entering1 reassure it2 bliss of publicity1 contempt of skill1 and joy in machinery and machine results4 ,an itinerant ignoramus comes round with his own lawn-mower1 the pushing of which he now makes his sole occupation for the green half of the year1 and the entire length1 breadth and thickness of whose wisdom is a wisdom not of the lawn but only of the lawn-mower2 how to keep its bearings oiled and its knives chewing fine2 and the lawn becomes staringly a factory product4 ,then tyranny turns the screw again1 and in the bliss of publicity and a very reasonable desire to make the small home lot look as large as possible1 down come the fences1 side and front1 and the applauding specialist of the lawn-mower begs that those obstructions may never be set up again1 because now the householder can have his lawn mowed so much quicker1 and he1 the pusher1 can serve more customers4 ,were he truly a gardener he might know somewhat of the sweet1 sunlit1 zephyrous1 fragrant outdoor privacies possible to a real garden1 and more or less of that benign art which1 by skilful shrubbery plantings1 can make a small place look much larger--as well as incomparably more interesting--than can any mere abolition of fences1 and particularly of the street fence4 ,but he has not so much as one eye of a genuine gardener or he would know that he is not keeping your lawn but only keeping it shaven4 ,he is not even a good garden laborer4 ,you might as well ask him how to know the wild flowers as how to know the lawn pests--dandelion1 chickweed1 summer-grass1 heal-all1 moneywort and the like--with which you must reckon wearily by and by because he only mows them in his blindness and lets them flatten to the ground and scatter their seed like an infantry firing-line4 ,inquire of him concerning any one of the few orphan shrubs he has permitted you to set where he least dislikes them1 and which he has trimmed clear of the sod--put into short skirts--so that he may run his whirling razors under 7and now and then against7 them at full speed4 ,will he know the smallest fact about it or yield any echo of your interest in it8 ,there is a late story of an aged mother1 in a darkened room1 saying falteringly to the kind son who has brought in some flowers which she caresses with her soft touch1 ,i was wishing to-day--,we used to have them in the yard--before the lawn-mower-- and saying no more4 ,i know it for a fact1 that in a certain cemetery the ,sons of the ,american ,revolution have for years been prevented from setting up their modest marks of commemoration upon the graves of ,revolutionary heroes1 because they would be in the way of the sexton's lawn-mower4 ,now in ,new ,orleans the case is so different that really the amateur gardener elsewhere has not all his rights until he knows why it is so different4 ,let us1 therefore1 look into it4 ,in that city one day the present writer accosted an ,irishman who stood1 pruning-shears in hand1 at the foot of ,clay's statue1 ,lafayette ,square4 ,it was the first week of ,january1 but beside him bloomed abundantly that lovely drooping jasmine called in the books jasminum multiflorum4 ,can you tell me what shrub this is8 ,that1 sor1 is the monthly flora6 ,thim as don't know the but-hanical nayum sometimes calls it the stare jismin1 but the but-hanical nayum is the monthly flora4 ,the inquirer spoke his thanks and passed on1 but an eager footfall overtook him1 his elbow felt a touch1 and the high title came a third time3 ,the but-hanical nayum is the monthly flora4 ,the querist passed on1 warmed by a grateful esteem for one who1 though doubtless a skilled and frequent tinkler of the lawn-mower within its just limitations1 was no mere dragoon of it1 but kept a regard for things higher than the bare sod1 things of grace in form1 in bloom1 in odor1 and worthy of but-hanical nayum4 ,no mere chauffeur he1 of the little two-wheeled machine whose cult1 throughout the most of our land1 has all but exterminated ornamental gardening4 ,in ,new ,orleans1 where it has not conquered1 there is no crowding for room4 ,a ten-story building is called there a sky-scraper4 ,the town has not a dozen in all1 and not one of that stature is an apartment or tenement house4 ,having felled her surrounding forests of cypress and drained the swamps in which they stood1 she has at command an open plain capable of housing a population seven times her present three hundred and fifty thousand1 if ever she chooses to build skyward as other cities do4 ,but this explains only why ,new ,orleans might have gardens1 not why she chooses to have them1 and has them by thousands1 when hundreds of other towns that have the room--and the lawns--choose not to have the shrubberies1 vines and flowers1 or have them without arrangement4 ,why should ,new ,orleans so exceptionally choose to garden1 and garden with such exceptional grace8 ,her house-lots are extraordinarily numerous in proportion to the numbers of her people1 and that is a beginning of the explanation2 but it is only a beginning4 ,individually the most of those lots are no roomier than lots elsewhere4 ,thousands of them1 prettily planted1 are extremely small4 ,the explanation lies mainly in certain peculiar limitations1 already hinted1 of her--democracy6 ,that is to say1 it lies in her fences4 ,her fences remain1 her democracy is different from the ,northern variety4 ,the difference may consist only in faults both there and here which we all hope to see democracy itself one day eliminate2 but the difference is palpable4 ,the fences mean that the dwellers behind them have never accorded to each other1 as neighbors1 that liberty-to-take-liberties of which ,northern householders and garden-holders1 after a quarter-century's disappointing experiment1 are a bit weary4 ,in ,new ,orleans virtually every home1 be it ever so proud or poor1 has a fence on each of its four sides4 ,as a result the home is bounded by its fences1 not by its doors4 ,unpleasant necessities these barriers are admitted to be1 and those who have them are quite right in not liking them in their bare anatomy4 ,so they clothe them with shrubberies and vines and thus on the home's true corporate bound the garden's profile1 countenance and character are established in the best way possible2 without1 that is1 any impulse toward embellishment insulated from utility4 ,compelled by the common frailties of all human nature 7even in a democracy7 to maintain fortifications1 the householder has veiled the militant aspect of his defences in the flowered robes and garlandries of nature's diplomacy and hospitality4 ,thus reassured1 his own inner hospitality can freely overflow into the fragrant open air and out upon the lawn--a lawn whose dimensions are enlarged to both eye and mind1 inasmuch as every step around its edges--around its meandering shrubbery borders--is made affable and entertaining by ,flora's versatilities4 ,illustration3 ,in ,new ,orleans the home is bounded by its fences1 not by its doors--so they clothe them with shrubberies and vines4 ,it is pleasant to notice how entirely the evergreen-vine-covered wall preserves the general air of spaciousness4 ,the forest tree at the front and right 7evergreen magnolia7 is covered with an evergreen vine from the turf to its branches4 ,illustration3 ,the lawn 444 lies clean-breasted1 green-breasted1 from one shrub-and-flower-planted side to the other1 along and across4 ,a common garden feature in ,new ,orleans is the division fence with front half of wire1 rear half of boards1 both planted out with shrubs4 ,the overhanging forest tree is the evergreen magnolia 7,m4 grandiflora74 ,at the same time1 let us note in passing1 this enlargement is partly because the lawn--not always but very much oftener than where lawns go unenclosed--lies clean-breasted1 green-breasted1 from one shrub-and-flower-planted side to the other1 along and across2 free of bush1 statue1 urn1 fountain1 sun-dial or pattern-bed1 an uninterrupted sward4 ,even where there are lapses from this delightful excellence they often do not spoil1 but only discount1 more or less1 the beauty of the general scheme1 as may be noted--if without offence we may offer it the homage of criticism--in one of the gardens we have photographed page #agf to illustrate these argumentations4 ,there eight distinct encumbrances narrow the sward without in the least adding to the garden's abounding charm4 ,the smallest effort of the reader's eye will show how largely1 in a short half-day's work1 the fair scene might be enhanced in lovely dignity simply by the elimination of these slight excesses1 or by their withdrawal toward the lawn's margins and into closer company with the tall trees4 ,in ,new ,orleans1 where1 even when there are basements1 of which there are many1 the domains of the cook and butler are somewhere else1 a nearly universal feature of every sort of dwelling--the banker's on two or three lots1 the laborer's on half a one--is a paved walk along one side of the house1 between the house and the lawn1 from a front gate to the kitchen4 ,generally there is but the one front gate1 facing the front door1 with a short walk leading directly up to this door4 ,in such case the rear walk1 beginning at the front door-steps1 turns squarely along the house's front1 then at its corner turns again as squarely to the rear as a drill-sergeant and follows the dwelling's ground contour with business precision--being a business path4 ,in fact it is only the same path we see in uncrowded town life everywhere in our land4 ,illustration3 ,there eight distinct encumbrances narrow the sward4444 ,in a half-day's work1 the fair scene might be enhanced in lovely dignity by the elimination of these excesses4 ,the sky-line of this beautiful garden becomes a part of the garden itself1 a fact of frequent occurrence in ,new ,orleans4 ,the happy contrast of rearmost oak and palm is also worthy of notice4 ,but down there it shows this peculiarity1 that it is altogether likely to be well bordered with blooming shrubs and plants along all that side of it next the lawn4 ,of course it is a fault that this shrubbery border--and all the more so because it is very apt to be1 as in three of our illustrations pages #agd1agh1 #ahj1 a rose border--should1 so often as it is1 be pinched in between parallel edges4 ,no pinching is as good a rule for the garden as for the kindergarten4 ,manifestly1 on the side next the house the edge between the walk and the planted border should run parallel with the base line of the house1 for these are business lines and therefore ever so properly lines of promptitude--of the shortest practicable distance between two points--lines of supply and demand1 lines of need4 ,for lines of need1 business speed6 ,but for lines of pleasure1 grace and leisure4 ,it is the tactful office of this shrubbery border to veil the business path from the lawn--from the pleasure-ground4 ,therefore its outside1 lawn-side edge should be a line of pleasure1 hence a line of grace1 hence not a straight line 7dead line71 nor yet a line of but one lethargic curve1 but a line of suavity and tranquil ongoing1 a leisurely undulating line4 ,illustration3 ,the rear walk 444 follows the dwelling's ground contour with business precision--being a business path4 ,not to have it so is an error1 but the error is an inoffensive one easily corrected and the merit is that the dwelling's business path is greenly1 bloomingly screened from its pleasure-ground by a lovely natural drapery which at the same time furnishes1 as far as the path goes1 the house's robes of modesty4 ,indeed they are furnished farther than the path goes2 for no good work gathers momentum more readily than does good gardening1 and the householder1 having begun so rightly1 has now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and farther side and forward to its front again4 ,thus may he wonderfully extenuate1 even above its reach and where it does not conceal1 the house's architectural faults1 thus winsomely enhance all its architectural charm2 like a sweet human mistress of the place1 putting into generous shadow all the ill1 and into open sunshine all the best1 of a husband's strong character4 7,see both right and left foreground of illustration on page #agh1 and right foreground on page #ahj47 ,and now if this ,new ,orleans idea--that enough private enclosure to secure good home gardening is not incompatible with public freedom1 green lawns1 good neighborship1 sense of room and fulness of hospitality1 and that a house-lot which is a picture is worth more to everybody 7and therefore is even more democratic7 than one which is little else than a map--if this idea1 we say1 finds any credence among sister cities and towns that may be able to teach the ,creole city much in other realms of art and criticism1 let us cast away chalk and charcoal for palette and brush and show in floral1 arborescent1 redolent detail what is the actual pictorial excellence of these ,new ,orleans gardens4 ,for notwithstanding all their shut-in state1 neither their virtues nor their faults are hid from the passing eye4 ,the street fence1 oftenest of iron1 is rarely more than breast-high and is always an open fence4 ,against its inner side frequently runs an evergreen hedge never taller than the fence's top4 ,commonly it is not so tall1 is always well clipped and is so civil to strangers that one would wish to see its like on every street front1 though he might prefer to find it not so invariably of the one sort of growth--a small1 handsome privet1 that is1 which nevertheless fulfils its office with the perfection of a solid line of palace sentries4 ,unluckily there still prevails a very old-fashioned tendency to treat the front fence as in itself ornamental and to forget two things3 ,first1 that its nakedness is no part of its ornamental value2 that it would be much handsomer lightly clothed--underclothed--like1 probably1 its very next neighbor2 clothed with a hedge1 either close or loose1 and generously kept below the passer's line of sight4 ,and1 second1 that from the householder's point of view1 looking streetward from his garden's inner depth1 its fence1 when unplanted1 is a blank interruption to his whole fair scheme of meandering foliage and bloom which on the other three sides frames in the lawn2 as though the garden were a lovely stage scene with the fence for footlights1 and some one had left the footlights unlit4 ,illustration3 ,thus may he wonderfully extenuate1 even 444 where it does not conceal1 the house's architectural faults4 ,a lovely stage scene1 we say1 without a hint of the stage's unreality2 for the side and rear fences and walls1 being frankly unornamental1 call for more careful management than the front and are often charmingly treated4 7,page #agd47 7,see1 for an example of a side fence with front half of wire and rear half of boards1 page #agd1 and for solid walls1 pages #ahj and #ahd47 ,where they separate neighbors' front lawns they may be low and open1 but back of the building-line1 being oftenest tight and generally more than head-high1 they are sure to be draped with such climbing floral fineries as honeysuckles1 ivies1 jasmines white and yellow1 lantanas1 roses or the ,madeira vine4 ,more frequently than not they are planted also1 in strong masses1 with ever so many beautiful sorts of firmer-stemmed growths1 herbaceous next the sod1 woody behind1 assembled according to stature1 from one to twelve feet high1 swinging in and out around the lawn until all stiffness of boundaries is waved and smiled away4 ,illustration3 444 a lovely stage scene without a hint of the stage's unreality4 ,the beauty of this spot could be enhanced in ten minutes by taking away the planted urns which stand like gazing children in the middle of the background4 ,in that first week of ,january already mentioned the present writer saw at every turn1 in such borders and in leaf and blossom1 the delicate blue-flowered plumbago2 two or three kinds of white jasmine1 also in bloom2 and the broad bush-form of the yellow jasmine1 beginning to flower4 ,with them were blooming roses of a dozen kinds2 the hibiscus 7not altha but the ,h4 rosasinensis of our ,northern greenhouses71 slim and tall1 flaring its mallow-flowers pink1 orange1 salmon and deep red2 the trailing-lantana1 covering broad trellises of ten feet in height and with its drooping masses of delicate foliage turned from green to mingled hues of lilac and rose by a complete mantle of their blossoms4 ,he saw the low1 sweet-scented geraniums of lemon1 rose and nutmeg odors1 persisting through the winter unblighted1 and the round-leaved1 zonal sorts surprisingly large of growth--in one case1 on a division fence1 trained to the width and height of six feet4 ,there1 too1 was the poinsettia still bending in its ,christmas red1 taller than the tallest man's reach1 often set too forthpushingly at the front1 but at times1 with truer art1 glowing like a red constellation from the remoter bays of the lawn2 and there1 taller yet1 the evergreen ,magnolia fuscata1 full of its waxen1 cream-tinted1 inch-long flowers smelling delicately like the banana4 ,he found the sweet olive1 of refined leaf and minute axillary flowers yielding their ravishing tonic odor with the reserve of the violet2 the pittosporum2 the box2 the myrtle2 the camphor-tree with its neat foliage answering fragrantly the grasp of the hand4 ,the dark camellia was there1 as broad and tall as a lilac-bush1 its firm1 glossy leaves of the deepest green and its splendid red flowers covering it from tip to sod1 one specimen showing by count a thousand blossoms open at once and the sod beneath innumerably starred with others already fallen4 ,the night jasmine1 in full green1 was not yet in blossom but it was visibly thinking of the spring4 ,the ,chinese privet1 of twenty feet stature1 in perennial leaf1 was saving its flowers for ,may4 ,the sea-green oleander1 fifteen feet high and wide 7see extreme left foreground1 page #agf71 drooped to the sward on four sides but hoarded its floral cascade for ,june4 ,the evergreen loquat 7locally miscalled the mespilus plum7 was already faltering into bloom2 also the orange1 with its flower-buds among its polished leaves1 whitening for their own wedding2 while high over them towered the date and other palms1 spired the cedar and arborvit1 and with majestic infrequency1 where grounds were ample1 spread the lofty green1 scintillating boughs of the magnolia grandiflora 7see left foregrounds on pages #agd1 #ahb and #ahd71 the giant1 winter-bare pecan and the wide1 mossy arms of the vast live-oak4 ,illustration3 ,back of the building-line the fences 444 generally more than head-high 444 are sure to be draped4 ,illustration3 444 from the autumn side of ,christmas to the summer side of ,easter4 ,in any garden as fair as this there should be some place to sit down4 ,this deficiency is one of the commonest faults in ,american gardening4 ,now while the time of year in which these conditions are visible heightens their lovely wonder1 their practical value to ,northern home-lovers is not the marvel and delight of something inimitable but their inspiring suggestion of what may be done with ordinary ,northern home grounds1 to the end that the floral pageantry of the ,southern ,january may be fully rivalled by the glory of the ,northern ,june4 ,for of course the ,flora of the ,north1 who in the winter of long white nights puts off all her jewelry and nearly all her robes and lies down to pleasant dreams1 is the blonde sister of1 and equal heiress with1 this darker one who1 in undivested greenery and flowered trappings1 persists in open-air revelry through all the months from the autumn side of ,christmas to the summer side of ,easter4 ,wherefore it seems to me the ,northern householder's first step should be to lay hold upon this ,new ,orleans idea in gardening--which is merely by adoption a ,new ,orleans idea1 while through and through1 except where now and then its votaries stoop to folly1 it is by book a ,northern voice1 the garden gospel of ,frederick ,law ,olmsted4 ,wherever ,american homes are assembled we may have1 all winter1 for the asking--if we will but ask ourselves instead of the lawn-mower man--an effect of home1 of comfort1 cheer and grace1 of summer and autumn reminiscences and of spring's anticipations1 immeasurably better than any ordinary eye or fancy can extort from the rectangular and stiffened-out nakedness of unplanted boundaries2 immeasurably better than the month-by-month daily death-stare of shroud-like snow around houses standing barefooted on the frozen ground4 ,it may be by hearty choice that we abide where we must forego outdoor roses in ,christmas week and broad-leaved evergreens blooming at ,new ,year's1 ,twelfth-night or ,carnival4 ,well and good6 ,but we can have even in mid-,january1 and ought to allow ourselves1 the lawn-garden's surviving form and tranced life rather than the shrubless lawn's unmarked grave flattened beneath the void of the snow4 ,we ought to retain the sleeping beauty of the ordered garden's unlost configuration1 with the warm house for its bosom1 with all its remoter contours--alleys1 bays1 bushy networks and sky-line--keeping a winter share of their feminine grace and softness4 ,we ought to retain the frozen music of its myriad gray1 red and yellow stems and twigs and lingering blue and scarlet berries stirring1 though leaflessly1 for the kiss of spring4 ,and we ought to retain the invincible green of cedars1 junipers and box1 cypress1 laurel1 hemlock spruce and cloaking ivy1 darkling amid and above these1 receiving from and giving to them a cheer which neither could have in their frostbound ,eden without mutual contrast4 ,illustration3 ,the sleeping beauty of the garden's unlost configuration 444 keeping a winter's share of its feminine grace and softness4 ,this picture was taken in the first flush of spring4 ,the trees in blossom are the wild ,japanese cherry4 ,eden6 ,if ,i so recklessly ignore latitude as to borrow the name of the first gardener's garden for such a shivering garden as this it is because ,i see this one in a dream of hope--a diffident1 interrogating hope--really to behold1 some day1 this dream-garden of ,northern winters as ,i have never with actual open eyes found one kept by any merely well-to-do ,american citizen4 ,if ,i describe it ,i must preface with all the disclaimers of a self-conscious amateur whose most venturesome argument goes no farther than ,why not8 yet whom the evergreen gardens of ,new ,orleans revisited in ,january impel to protest against every needless submission to the tyrannies of frost and of a gardening art--or non-art1 a submission which only in the outdoor embellishment of the home takes winter supinely1 abjectly4 ,this garden of a hope's dream covers but three ordinary town lots4 ,often it shrinks to but one without asking for any notable change of plan4 ,following all the lines1 the hard1 law lines1 that divide it from its neighbors and the street1 there runs1 waist-high on its street front1 shoulder-high on its side bounds1 a close evergreen hedge of hemlock spruce4 ,in its young way this hedge has been handsome from infancy2 though still but a few years old it gives1 the twelvemonth round1 a note both virile and refined in color1 texture and form1 and if the art that planted it and the care that keeps it do not decay neither need the hedge for a century to come4 ,against the intensest cold this side of ,labrador it is perfectly hardy1 is trimmed with a sloping top to shed snows whose weight might mutilate it1 and can be kept in repair from generation to generation1 like the house's plumbing or roof1 or like some green-uniformed pet regiment with ranks yet full after the last of its first members has perished4 ,furthermore1 along the inner side of this green hedge 7sometimes close against it1 sometimes with a turfed alley between71 as well as all round about the house1 extend borders of deciduous shrubs1 with such meandering boundaries next the broad white lawn as the present writer1 for this time1 has probably extolled enough4 ,these bare1 gray shrub masses are not wholly bare or gray and have other and most pleasingly visible advantages over unplanted1 pallid vacancy1 others besides the mere lace-work of their twigs and the occasional tenderness of a last summer's bird's nest4 ,here and there1 breaking the cold monotone1 a bush of moose maple shows the white-streaked green of its bare stems and sprays1 or cornus or willow gives a soft glow of red1 purple or yellow4 ,only here and there1 insists my dream1 lest when winter at length gives way to the rosy time of the year their large and rustic gentleness mar the nuptial revels of summer's returned aristocracy4 ,because1 moreover1 there is a far stronger effect of life1 home and cheer from the broad-leaved evergreens which1 in duly limited numbers1 assemble with and behind these1 and from the lither sorts of conifers that spire out of the network and haze of living things in winter sleep4 ,the plantings at the garden's and dwelling's front being properly1 of course1 lower than those farther back1 ,i see among them1 in this dream1 the evergreen box and several kinds of evergreen ferns4 ,i see two or three species of evergreen barberries1 not to speak of ,thunberg's leafless one warm red with its all-winter berries1 the winter garden's rubric4 ,i see two varieties of euonymus2 various low junipers2 two sorts of laurel2 two of andromeda1 and the high-clambering evergreen ivy4 ,beginning with these in front1 infrequent there but multiplying toward the place's rear1 are bush and tree forms of evergreen holly1 native rhododendrons1 the many sorts of foreign cedars and our native ones white and red1 their skyward lines modified as the square or pointed architecture of the house may call for contrasts in pointed or broad-topped arborescence4 ,if1 at times1 ,i dream behind all this a grove1 with now and then one of its broad1 steepling or columnar trees pushed forward upon the lawn1 it is only there that ,i see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce4 ,such is the vision1 and if ,i never see it with open eyes and in real sunlight1 even as a dream it is--like certain other things of less dignity--grateful1 comforting4 ,i warrant there are mistakes in it1 but you will find mistakes wherever you find achievement1 and there is no law against them--in well-meant dreams4 ,observe1 if you please1 this vision lays no drawback on the garden's summer beauty and affluence4 ,twelve months of the year it enhances its dignity and elegance4 ,both the numerical proportions of evergreens to other greens1 and the scheme of their distribution1 are quite as correct and effective for contrast and background to the transient foliage and countless flowers of ,july as amid the bare ramage of ,january4 ,summer and winter alike1 the gravest items among them all1 the conifers1 retain their values even in those ,new ,orleans gardens4 ,when we remember that in ,new ,england and on all its isotherm it is winter all that half of the year when most of us are at home1 why should we not seek to realize this snow-garden dream8 ,even a partial or faulty achievement of it will surely look lovelier than the naked house left out on its naked white lawn like an unclaimed trunk on a way-station platform4 ,i would not1 for anything1 offend the reader's dignity1 but ,i must think that this midwinter garden may be made at least as much lovelier than no garden as ,alice's ,cheshire cat was lovelier--with or without its grin--than the grin without the cat4 ,illustration3 ,it is only there that ,i see anything so stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce4 ,the blossoming trees in this picture are a ,chinese crab blooming ten days later than the ,japanese wild cherry 7see illustration facing p4 #ahf71 which is now in full leaf at their back4 ,shall we summarize8 ,our gist is this3 that those gardens of ,new ,orleans are as they are1 not by mere advantage of climate but for several other reasons4 ,their bounds of ownership and privacy are enclosed in hedges1 tight or loose1 or in vine-clad fences or walls4 ,the lawn is regarded as a ruling feature of the home's visage1 but not as its whole countenance--one flat feature never yet made a lovely face4 ,this lawn feature is beautified and magnified by keeping it open from shrub border to shrub border1 saving it1 above all things1 from the gaudy barbarism of pattern-bedding2 and by giving it swing and sweep of graceful contours4 ,and lastly1 all ground lines of the house are clothed with shrubberies whose deciduous growths are companioned with broad-leafed evergreens and varied conifers1 in whatever proportions will secure the best midwinter effects without such abatement to those of summer as would diminish the total of the whole year's joy4 ,these are things that can be done anywhere in our land1 and wherever done with due regard to soil as well as to climate will give us gardens worthy to be named with those of ,new ,orleans1 if not1 in some aspects and at particular times of the year1 excelling them4 ,as long as mistakes are made in the architecture of houses they will be made in the architecture of gardening1 and ,new ,orleans herself1 by a little more care for the fundamentals of art1 of all art1 could easily surpass her present floral charm4 ,yet in her gardens there is one further point calling for approval and imitation3 the very high trimming of the stems of lofty trees4 ,here many a reader will feel a start of resentment2 but in the name of the exceptional beauty one may there see resulting from the practice let us allow the idea a moment's entertainment1 put argument aside and consider a concrete instance whose description shall be our closing word4 ,across the street in which1 that ,january1 we sojourned 7we were two71 there was a piece of ground of an ordinary town square's length and somewhat less breadth4 ,it had been a private garden4 ,its owner had given it to the city4 ,along its broad side1 which our windows looked out upon1 stood perfectly straight and upright across the sky to the south of them a row of magnolias 7grandiflora7 at least sixty feet high1 with their boles1 as smooth as the beach1 trimmed bare for two-thirds of their stature4 ,the really decorative marks of the trimming had been so many years1 so many decades1 healed as to show that no harm had come of it or would come4 ,the soaring1 dark-green1 glittering foliage stood out against the almost perpetually blue and white sky4 ,beyond them1 a few yards within the place but not in a straight line1 rose even higher a number of old cedars similarly treated and offering a pleasing contrast to the magnolias by the feathery texture of their dense sprays and the very different cast of their lack-lustre green4 ,overtopping all1 on the farther line of the grounds1 southern line1 several pecan-trees of nearly a hundred feet in height1 leafless1 with a multitude of broad-spreading boughs all high in air by natural habit1 gave an effect strongly like that of winter elms1 though much enlivened by the near company of the evergreen masses of cedar and magnolia4 ,these made the upper-air half of the garden1 the other half being assembled below4 ,for the lofty trim of the wintergreen-trees--the beauty of which may have been learned from the palms--allowed and invited another planting beneath them4 ,magnolias1 when permitted to branch low1 are1 to undergrowth1 among the most inhospitable of trees1 but in this garden1 where the sunlight and the breezes passed abundantly under such high-lifted arms and among such clean1 bare stems1 a congregation of shrubs1 undershrubs and plants of every stature and breadth1 arose1 flourished and flowered without stint4 ,yonder the wind-split1 fathom-long leaves of the banana1 brightening the background1 arched upward1 drooped again and faintly oscillated to the air's caress4 ,here bloomed and smelled the delicate magnolia fuscata1 and here1 redder with flowers than green with shining leaves1 shone the camellia4 ,here spread the dark oleander1 the pittosporum and the ,chinese privet2 and here were the camphor-tree and the slender sweet olive--we have named them all before and our steps should not take us over the same ground twice in one circuit2 that would be bad gardening4 ,but there they were1 under those ordinarily so intolerant trees1 prospering and singing praises with them1 some in full blossom and perfume1 some waiting their turn1 like parts of a choir4 ,in the midst of all1 where a broad path eddied quite round an irregular open space1 and that tender quaintness of decay appeared which is the unfailing ,new ,orleans touch1 the space was filled with roses4 ,this spot was lovely enough by day and not less so for being a haunt of toddling babes and their nurses2 but at night--6 ,regularly at evening there comes into the ,new ,orleans air1 from ,heaven knows whither1 not a mist1 not a fog nor a dampness1 but a soft1 transparent1 poetical dimness that in no wise shortens the range of vision--a counterpart of that condition which so many thousands of favored travellers in other longitudes know as the ,atlantic haze4 ,one night--oh1 oftener than that1 but let us say one for the value of understatement--returning to our quarters some time before midnight1 we stepped out upon the balcony to gaze across into that garden4 ,the sky was clear1 the neighborhood silent4 ,a wind stirred1 but the shrubberies stood motionless4 ,the moon1 nearly full1 swung directly before us1 pouring its gracious light through the tenuous cross-hatchings of the pecans1 nestling it in the dense tops of the cedars and magnolias and sprinkling it to the ground among the lower growths and between their green-black shadows4 ,when in a certain impotence of rapture we cast about in our minds for an adequate comparison--where description in words seemed impossible--the only parallel we could find was the art of ,corot and such masters from the lands where the wonderful pictorial value of trees trimmed high has been known for centuries and is still cherished4 ,for without those trees so disciplined the ravishing picture of that garden would have been impossible4 ,of course our ,northern gardens cannot smile like that in winter4 ,but they need not perish1 as tens of thousands of lawn-mower1 pattern-bed1 so-called gardens do4 ,they should but hibernate1 as snugly as the bear1 the squirrel1 the bee2 and who that ever in full health of mind and body saw spring come back to a ,northern garden of blossoming trees1 shrubs and undershrubs has not rejoiced in a year of four clear-cut seasons8 ,or who that ever saw mating birds1 greening swards1 starting violets and all the early flowers loved of ,shakespeare1 ,milton1 ,shelley1 ,bryant and ,tennyson1 has not felt that the resurrection of landscape and garden owes at least half its glory to the long trance of winter1 and wished that dwellers in ,creole lands might see ,new ,england's ,first of ,june8 ,for what says the brave old song-couplet of ,new ,england's mothers8 ,that-- ,spring would be but wintry weather ,if we had nothing else but spring4 ,every year1 even in ,massachusetts--even in ,michigan--spring1 summer1 and autumn are sure to come overladen with their gifts and make us a good1 long1 merry visit4 ,all the other enlightened and well-to-do nations of the world entertain them with the gardening art and its joys and so make fairer1 richer and stronger than can be made indoors alone the individual soul1 the family1 the social1 the civic1 the national life4 ,in this small matter we ,americans are at the wrong end of the procession4 ,what shall we do about it8