



Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Janet Blenkinship
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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[Illustration: "That gardening is best... which best ministers to man's
felicity with least disturbance of nature's freedom."

This is my study. The tree in the middle of the picture is Barrie's elm.
I once lifted it between my thumb and finger, but I was younger and the
tree was smaller. The dark tree in the foreground on the right is Felix
Adler's hemlock. [Page 82]]




THE AMATEUR GARDEN

BY

GEORGE W. CABLE


ILLUSTRATED


CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK: MCMXIV

_Copyright, 1914, by_

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

_Published October, 1914_




  CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

  MY OWN ACRE                                                          1

  THE AMERICAN GARDEN                                                 41

  WHERE TO PLANT WHAT                                                 79

  THE COTTAGE GARDENS OF NORTHAMPTON                                 107

  THE PRIVATE GARDEN'S PUBLIC VALUE                                  129

  THE MIDWINTER GARDENS OF NEW ORLEANS                               163



  ILLUSTRATIONS

  "That gardening is best... which best ministers to man's
       felicity with least disturbance of nature's freedom"     _Frontis_

  "... that suddenly falling wooded and broken ground where Mill
       River loiters through Paradise"                                 6

  "On this green of the dryads... lies My Own Acre"                   8

  "The beautiful mill-pond behind its high dam keeps the river full
      back to the rapids just above My Own Acre"                      12

  "A fountain... where one,--or two,--can sit and hear it whisper"   22

  "The bringing of the grove out on the lawn and the pushing of
       the lawn in under the grove was one of the early tasks of My
       Own Acre"                                                      24

  "Souvenir trees had from time to time been planted on the lawn
       by visiting friends"                                           26

  "How the words were said which some of the planters spoke"          28

  "'Where are you going?' says the eye. 'Come and see,' says the
       roaming line"                                                  34

  "The lane is open to view from end to end. It has two deep bays
       on the side nearest the lawn"                                  36

  "... until the house itself seems as naturally... to grow up
       out of the garden as the high keynote rises at the end
       of a lady's song"                                              48

  "Beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds"                  52

  "Muffle your architectural angles in foliage and bloom"             52

  Fences masked by shrubbery                                          64

  After the first frost annual plantings cease to be attractive       72

  Shrubbery versus annuals                                            72

  Shrubs are better than annuals for masking right angles. South
       Hall, Williston Seminary                                       74

  "... a line of shrubbery swinging in and out in strong, graceful
       undulations"                                                   74

  "However enraptured of wild nature you may be, you do and must
       require of her some subserviency about your own dwelling"      84

  "Plant it where it will best enjoy itself"                          86

  "... climaxes to be got by superiority of stature, by darkness and
       breadth of foliage and by splendor of bloom belong at its far
       end"                                                           94

  "Some clear disclosure of charm still remote may beckon and lure"   96

  "... tall, rectangular, three-story piles... full of windows
       all of one size, pigeon-house style"                          100

  "You can make gardening a concerted public movement"               112

  "Plant on all your lot's boundaries, plant out the foundation-lines
       of all its buildings"                                         122

  "Not chiefly to reward the highest art in gardening, but to procure
       its widest and most general dissemination"                    122

  "Having wages bigger than their bodily wants, and having spiritual
       wants numerous and elastic enough to use up the surplus"      138

  "One such competing garden was so beautiful last year that
       strangers driving by stopped and asked leave to dismount
       and enjoy a nearer view"                                      138

  "Beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious
      domicile"                                                      148

  "Those who pay no one to die, plant or prune for them"             148

  "In New Orleans the home is bounded by its fences, not by its
       doors--so they clothe them with shrubberies and vines"        174

  "The lawn... lies clean-breasted, green-breasted, from one
      shrub-and-flower-planted side to the other, along and across"  174

  "There eight distinct encumbrances narrow the sward.... In a
      half-day's work, the fair scene might be enhanced in lovely
      dignity by the elimination of these excesses"                  176

  "The rear walk... follows the dwelling's ground contour with
       business precision--being a business path"                    178

  "Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even... where it does not
  conceal, the house's architectural faults"                         180

  "... a lovely stage scene without a hint of the stage's unreality" 182

  "Back of the building-line the fences...  generally more
      than head-high... are _sure_ to be draped"               184

  "... from the autumn side of Christmas to the summer side of
       Easter"                                                       184

  "The sleeping beauty of the garden's unlost configuration... keeping
       a winter's share of its feminine grace and softness"          186

  "It is only there that I see anything so stalwart as a pine or
       so rigid as a spruce"                                         192




MY OWN ACRE


A lifelong habit of story-telling has much to do with the production of
these pages.

All the more does it move me because it has always included, as perhaps
it does in most story-tellers, a keen preference for true stories,
stories of actual occurrence.

A flower-garden trying to be beautiful is a charming instance of
something which a storyteller can otherwise only dream of. For such a
garden is itself a story, one which actually and naturally occurs, yet
occurs under its master's guidance and control and with artistic effect.

Yet it was this same story-telling bent which long held me back while
from time to time I generalized on gardening and on gardens other than
my own. A well-designed garden is not only a true story happening
artistically but it is one that passes through a new revision each year,
"with the former translations diligently compared and revised." Each
year my own acre has confessed itself so full of mistranslations of the
true text of gardening, has promised, each season, so much fairer a show
in its next edition, and has been kept so prolongedly busy teaching and
reteaching its master where