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it will have for those we love, and those who may come after us, a charm that no other place on earth will ever have until the time comes when they take up the work of home-making for themselves.

PILLAR-TRAINED VINES

      The man or woman who begins the improvement and the beautifying of the home as a sort of recreation, as so many do, will soon feel the thrill of the delightful occupation, and be inspired to greater undertakings than he dreamed of at the beginning. One of the charms of home-making is that it grows upon you, and before you are aware of it that which was begun without a definite purpose in view becomes so delightfully absorbing that you find yourself thinking about it in the intervals of other work, and are impatient to get out among "the green things growing," and dig, and plant, and prune, and train. You feel, I fancy, something of the enthusiasm that Adam must have felt when he looked over Eden, and saw what great things were waiting to be done in it. I am quite satisfied he saw chances for improvement on every hand. God had placed there the material for the first gardener to work with, but He had wisely left it for the other to do with it what he thought best, when actuated by the primal instinct which makes gardeners of so many, if not the most, of us when the opportunity to do so comes our way.

      I do not advocate the development of the æsthetic features of the home from the standpoint of dollars and cents. I urge it because I believe it is the duty of the home-owner to make it as pleasant as it can well be made, and because I believe in the gospel of beauty as much as I believe in the gospel of the Bible. It is the religion that appeals to the finer instincts, and calls out and develops the better impulses of our nature. It is the religion that sees back of every tree, and shrub, and flower, the God that makes all things—the God that plans—the God that expects us to make the most and the best of all the elements of the good and the beautiful which He has given into our care.

      In the preparation of this book I have had in mind the fact that comparatively few home-owners who set about the improvement of the home-grounds know what to do, and what to make use of. For the benefit of such persons I have tried to give clear and definite instructions that will enable them to work intelligently. I have written from personal experience in the various phases of gardening upon which I have touched in this book. I am quite confident that the information given will stand the test of most thorough trial. What I have done with the various plants I speak of, others can do if they set about it in the right way, and with the determination of succeeding. The will will find the way to success. I would not be understood as intending to convey the impression that I consider my way as the way. By no means. Others have accomplished the same results by different methods. I simply tell what I have done, and how I have done it, and leave it to the home-maker to be governed by the results of my experience or that of others who have worked toward the same end. We may differ in methods, but the outcome is, in most instances, the same. I have written from the standpoint of the amateur, for other amateurs who would make the improvement of the home-grounds a pleasure and a means of relaxation rather than a source of profit in a financial sense, believing that what I have to say will commend itself to the non-professional gardener as sensible, practical, and helpful, and strictly in line with the things he needs to know when he gets down to actual work.

      I have also tried to make it plain that much of which goes to the making of the home is not out of reach of the man of humble means—that it is possible for the laboring man to have a home as truly beautiful in the best sense of the term as the man can have who has any amount of money to spend—that it is not the money that we put into it that counts so much as the love for it and the desire to take advantage of every chance for improvement. Home, for home's sake, is the idea that should govern. Money can hire the work done, but it cannot infuse into the result the satisfaction that comes to the man who is his own home-maker.

      But not every person who reads this book will be a home-maker in the sense spoken of above. It will come into the hands of those who have homes about which improvements have already been made by themselves or others, but who take delight in the cultivation of shrubs and plants because of love for them. Many of these persons get a great deal of pleasure out of experimenting with them. Others do not care to spend time in experiments, but would be glad to find a short cut to success. To such this book will make a strong appeal, for I feel confident it will help them to achieve success in gardening operations that are new to them if they follow the instruction to be found in its pages. I have not attempted to tell all about gardening, for there is much about it that I have yet to learn. I expect to keep on learning as long as I live, for there is always more and more for us to find out about it. That's one of its charms. But I have sought to impart the fundamental principles of it as I have arrived at a knowledge of them, from many years of labor among trees, and shrubs, and flowers—a labor of love—and it is with a sincere hope that I have not failed in my purpose that I give this book to

      The Home-Maker and the Garden-Lover.

      The Author.

ILLUSTRATIONS

       Table of Contents

	PAGE
"Not Wholly in the Busy World, nor Quite Beyond it, Blooms the Garden that I Love"	Frontispiece
Pillar-Trained Vines	8
Ivy, Climbing Roses, and Colorado Blue Spruce	34
A Bit of Informal Border	37
Shrubs Along the Driveway	44
Snowball	57
American Ivy and Geraniums	60
Honeysuckle	73
Japan Ivy Growing on Wall	75
Shrubs and Perennials Combined in Border	83
Old-Fashioned Hollyhocks	88
The Peony at Its Best	90
A Bit of the Border of Perennial Plants	92
A Bed of Asters	106 Скачать книгу В начало < 1 2 3 4 5 > В конец