Happiness is a quality of a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the
anticipation of joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so
many books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all these
books have been good and useful. It would be ungrateful, at the least,
for the present writer to say otherwise; but books grow old, and the
advice becomes too familiar. The sentences need to be transposed and the
order of the chapters varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or, to
speak plainly, a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in every
decade, or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There has
been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks,--Gardiner &
Hepburn, M'Mahon, Cobbett--original, pungent, versatile
Cobbett!--Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers, Buist, and a dozen
more, each one a little richer because the others had been written. But
even the fact that all books pass into oblivion does not deter another
hand from making still another venture.

[Illustration: Fig. 1. The ornamental burdock]

I expect, then, that every person who reads this book will make a
garden, or will try to make one; but if only tares grow where roses are
desired, I must remind the reader that at the outset I advised pigweeds.
The book, therefore, will suit everybody,--the experienced gardener,
because it will be a repetition of what he already knows; and the
novice, because it will apply as well to a garden of burdocks as
of onions.

* * * * *

_What a garden is._