Yet particularly because such gardening is so, and because some of its
finest rewards are so slow-coming and long-abiding, 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 posterity. "John," said his aged father to one
of our living poets, "I know now how to transplant full-grown trees
successfully. Do it a long time ago." Let the stripling plant the
sapling.
Youth, however, and especially our American youth, has his or her
excuses, such as they are. Of the garden or the place to be gardened,
"It's not mine," he or she warmly says; "it's only my father's," or "my
mother's."
Young man! Young maiden! True, the place, so pathetically begging to be
gardened, may not be your future home, may never be your property, and
it is right enough that a feeling for ownership should begin to shape
your daily life. But let it not misshape it. You know that ownership is
not all of life nor the better half of it, 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 Eve.
It is better, for you can do so in a much more fortunate manner, having
tools and the first pair's warning example. It is better also because
you can do what to them was impossible; you can make gardening a
concerted public movement.
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