These two markings, averaged, determine the standing of all
prize-winning gardens except the leading four. Then the president calls
in one professional and one amateur expert, visits with them as many of
the most promising contestants as can be seen in an afternoon's drive,
and with them decides the award of the four highest prizes.
[Illustration: "Plant on all your lot's boundaries, plant out the
foundation-lines of all its buildings."
A secluded back corner of a prize-winner's garden which shows how slight
a planting may redeem the homeliness of an old fence.]
[Illustration: "Not chiefly to reward the highest art in gardening, but
to procure its widest and most general dissemination."
A cheap apartment row whose landlord had its planting done by the
People's Institute.]
That is all. When we have given two or three lesser items our story is
told--for what it is worth. It is well to say we began small; in our
first season, fifteen years ago, our whole roll of competitors numbered
but sixty. It is the visiting that makes the difference; last season
these visits, volunteer and official, were more than thirty-one hundred.
Another source of our success we believe to be the fact that our prizes
are many and the leading ones large--fifteen, twelve, nine dollars, and
so on down. Prizes and all, the whole movement costs a yearly cash
outlay of less than three hundred dollars; without the People's
Institute at its back it could still be done for five hundred.
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