CHAPTER I
THE POINT OF VIEW
[Illustration: I. The open center.]
Wherever there is soil, plants grow and produce their kind, and all
plants are interesting; when a person makes a choice as to what plants
he shall grow in any given place, he becomes a gardener or a farmer; and
if the conditions are such that he cannot make a choice, he may adopt
the plants that grow there by nature, and by making the most of them may
still be a gardener or a farmer in some degree.
Every family, therefore, may have a garden. If there is not a foot of
land, there are porches or windows. Wherever there is sunlight, plants
may be made to grow; and one plant in a tin-can may be a more helpful
and inspiring garden to some mind than a whole acre of lawn and flowers
may be to another.
The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily,
on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the
person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to
cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little.
In the vast majority of cases a person will be happier if he has no
rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with
the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the
plants that thrive chance not to be the ones that he planted, they are
plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.
We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but we are happier
when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty
pigweeds, growing and crowding in luxuriant abandon, may be a better and
more worthy object of affection than a bed of coleuses in which every
spark of life and spirit and individuality has been sheared out and
suppressed. The man who worries morning and night about the dandelions
in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions. Each
blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it shines in the exuberant
sunlight of the growing spring, and attracts the insects to its bosom.
Little children like the dandelions: why may not we? Love the things
nearest at hand; and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the
gate of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said to
have made as he saw the luxuries in the market, "How much there is in
the world that I do not want!"
I verily believe that this paragraph I have just written is worth more
than all the advice with which I intend to cram the succeeding pages,
notwithstanding the fact that I have most assiduously extracted this
advice from various worthy but, happily, long-forgotten authors.
Happiness is a quality of a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the
anticipation of joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so
many books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all these
books have been good and useful. It would be ungrateful, at the least,
for the present writer to say otherwise; but books grow old, and the
advice becomes too familiar. The sentences need to be transposed and the
order of the chapters varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or, to
speak plainly, a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in every
decade, or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There has
been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks,--Gardiner &
Hepburn, M'Mahon, Cobbett--original, pungent, versatile
Cobbett!--Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers, Buist, and a dozen
more, each one a little richer because the others had been written. But
even the fact that all books pass into oblivion does not deter another
hand from making still another venture.
I expect, then, that every person who reads this book will make a
garden, or will try to make one; but if only tares grow where roses are
desired, I must remind the reader that at the outset I advised pigweeds.
The book, therefore, will suit everybody,--the experienced gardener,
because it will be a repetition of what he already knows; and the
novice, because it will apply as well to a garden of burdocks as
of onions.
What a garden is.
A garden is the personal part of an estate, the area that is most
intimately associated with the private life of the home. Originally, the
garden was the area inside the inclosure or lines of fortification, in
distinction from the unprotected area or fields that lay beyond; and
this latter area was the particular domain of agriculture. This book
understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises
devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The
garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not
make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden
in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this book
declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks,
drives, and fences, should be planted. What we shall plant--whether
sward, lilacs, thistles, cabbages, pears, chrysanthemums, or
tomatoes--we shall talk about as we proceed.
The only way to keep land perfectly unproductive is to keep it moving.
The moment the owner lets it alone, the planting has begun. In my own
garden, this first planting is of pigweeds. These may be followed, the
next year, by ragweeds, then by docks and thistles, with here and there
a start of clover and grass; and it all ends in June-grass and
dandelions.
[Illustration: Fig. 1. The ornamental burdock]
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