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 pages, 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 be.
For the reader's better advantage, however, let me first state one or
two general ideas which have given this activity and its picturesque
results particular aspects and not others.
I lately heard a lady ask an amateur gardener, "What is the garden's
foundation principle?"
There was a certain overgrown pomp in the question's form, but that is
how she very modestly asked it, and I will take no liberty with its
construction. I thought his reply a good one.
"We have all," he said, "come up from wild nature. In wild nature there
are innumerable delights, but they are qualified by countless
inconveniences. The cave, tent, cabin, 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 man. Yet rightly we are loath to lose any more of nature than
we must in order to be her masters and her children in one, and to
gather from her the largest fund of profit and delight she can be made
to yield.
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