probably largest under these limitations, for in this way we show what
beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds and with the least
outlay. Its private educative value, too, is probably largest thus,
because thus we disseminate as a home delight a practical knowledge of
aesthetic principles among those who may at any time find it expedient to
become wage-earning gardeners on the home grounds of the well-to-do.

[Illustration: "Beautiful results may be got on smallest grounds."

This is half of a back yard, the whole of which is equally handsome. The
place to which it belongs took a capital prize in the Carnegie Flower
Garden Competition.]

[Illustration: "Muffle your architectural angles in foliage and bloom."

An invisible fault of this planting is that it was set too close to the
building and tended to give an impression, probably groundless, of
promoting dampness. Also it was an inconvenience to mechanics in
painting or repairing.]

The competing gardens being kept wholly without hired labor, of course
our constant advice to all contestants is to shun formal gardening. It
is a pity that in nearly all our cities and towns the most notable
examples of gardening are found in the parks, boulevards, and
cemeteries. By these flaring displays thousands of modest cottagers who
might easily provide, on their small scale, lovely gardens about their
dwellings at virtually no cost and with no burdensome care, get a notion
that this, and this only, is artistic gardening and hence that a home
garden for oneself would be too expensive and troublesome to be thought
of. On the other hand, a few are tempted to mimic them on a petty scale,
and so spoil their little grass-plots and amuse, without entertaining,
their not more tasteful but only less aspiring neighbors. In
Northampton, in our Carnegie prize contest--so called for a very
sufficient and pleasant reason--our counsel is to avoid all mimicry in
gardening as we would avoid it in speech or in gait. Sometimes we do not
mind being repetitious. "In gardening" we say--as if we had never said
it before--"almost the only thing which costs unduly--in money or in
mortification--is for one to try to give himself somebody else's
garden!" Often we say this twice to the same person.

One of the reasons we give against it is that it leads to toy gardening,
and toy gardening is of all sorts the most pitiful and ridiculous. "No
true art," we say, "can tolerate any make-believe which