A garden is the personal part of an estate, the area that is most
intimately associated with the private life of the home. Originally, the
garden was the area inside the inclosure or lines of fortification, in
distinction from the unprotected area or fields that lay beyond; and
this latter area was the particular domain of agriculture. This book
understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises
devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The
garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not
make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden
in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this book
declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks,
drives, and fences, should be planted. What we shall plant--whether
sward, lilacs, thistles, cabbages, pears, chrysanthemums, or
tomatoes--we shall talk about as we proceed.

The only way to keep land perfectly unproductive is to keep it moving.
The moment the owner lets it alone, the planting has begun. In my own
garden, this first planting is of pigweeds. These may be followed, the
next year, by ragweeds, then by docks and thistles, with here and there
a start of clover and grass; and it all ends in June-grass and
dandelions.

Nature does not allow the land to remain bare and idle. Even the banks
where plaster and lath were dumped two or three years ago are now
luxuriant with burdocks and sweet clover; and yet persons who pass those
dumps every day say that they can grow nothing in their own yard because
the soil is so poor! Yet I venture that those same persons furnish most
of the pigweed seed that I use on my garden.

The lesson is that there is no soil--where a house would be built--so