Manual of Gardening
(Second Edition),
by L. H. Bailey
*** START OF MANUAL OF GARDENING (SECOND EDITION) ***
MANUAL OF GARDENING
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE MAKING
OF HOME GROUNDS AND THE GROWING
OF FLOWERS, FRUITS, AND VEGETABLES FOR HOME USE
BY
L. H. BAILEY
SECOND EDITION
1910
EXPLANATION
It has been my desire to reconstruct the two books, "Garden-Making" and
"Practical Garden-Book"; but inasmuch as these books have found a
constituency in their present form, it has seemed best to let them stand
as they are and to continue their publication as long as the demand
maintains itself, and to prepare a new work on gardening. This new work
I now offer as "A Manual of Gardening." It is a combination and revision
of the main parts of the other two books, together with much new
material and the results of the experience of ten added years.
A book of this kind cannot be drawn wholly from one's own practice,
unless it is designed to have a very restricted and local application.
Many of the best suggestions in such a book will have come from
correspondents, questioners, and those who enjoy talking about gardens;
and my situation has been such that these communications have come to me
freely. I have always tried, however, to test all such suggestions by
experience and to make them my own before offering them to my reader. I
must express my special obligation to those persons who collaborated in
the preparation of the other two books, and whose contributions have
been freely used in this one: to C.E. Hunn, a gardener of long
experience; Professor Ernest Walker, reared as a commercial florist;
Professor L.R. Taft and Professor F.A. Waugh, well known for their
studies and writings in horticultural subjects.
In making this book, I have had constantly in mind the home-maker
himself or herself rather than the professional gardener. It is of the
greatest importance that we attach many persons to the land; and I am
convinced that an interest in gardening will naturally take the place of
many desires that are much more difficult to gratify, and that lie
beyond the reach of the average man or woman.
It has been my good fortune to have seen amateur and commercial
gardening in all parts of the United States, and I have tried to express
something of this generality in the book; yet my experience, as well as
that of my original collaborators, is of the northeastern states, and
the book is therefore necessarily written from this region as a base.
One gardening book cannot be made to apply in its practice in all parts
of the United States and Canada unless its instructions are so general
as to be practically useless; but the principles and points of view may
have wider application. While I have tried to give only the soundest and
most tested advice, I cannot hope to have escaped errors and
shortcomings, and I shall be grateful to my reader if he will advise me
of mistakes or faults that he may discover. I shall expect to use such
information in the making of subsequent editions.
Of course an author cannot hold himself responsible for failures that
his reader may suffer. The statements in a book of this kind are in the
nature of advice, and it may or it may not apply in particular
conditions, and the success or failure is the result mostly of the
judgment and carefulness of the operator. I hope that no reader of a
gardening book will ever conceive the idea that reading a book and
following it literally will make him a gardener. He must always assume
his own risks, and this will be the first step in his personal progress.
I should explain that the botanical nomenclature of this book is that of
the "Cyclopedia of American Horticulture," unless otherwise stated. The
exceptions are the "trade names," or those used by nurserymen and
seedsmen in the sale of their stock.
I should further explain the reason for omitting ligatures and using
such words as peony, spirea, dracena, cobea. As technical Latin
formularies, the compounds must of course be retained, as in Pæonia
officinalis, Spiræa Thunbergi, Dracæna fragrans, Cobœa
scandens; but as Anglicized words of common speech it is time to follow
the custom of general literature, in which the combinations æ and œ
have disappeared. This simplification was begun in the "Cyclopedia of
American Horticulture" and has been continued in other writings.
L. H. BAILEY.
ITHACA, NEW YORK, January 20, 1910.
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