Gardening Books

The Epistle to the generall andgentle Reader. Although (generall reader) the nature of this worst part of this last age hath conuerted all things to such vildnesse that whatsoeuer is truely good is now esteemed most vitious, learning being derided, fortitude drawne into so many definitions that it consisteth in meere words onely, and although nothing is happy or prosperous, but meere fashion &... more...

A Aaron's Rod.—See "Solidago." Abelia.—Very ornamental evergreen shrubs, bearing tubular, funnel-shaped flowers. They succeed in any ordinary soil if the situation is warm and sheltered, and are readily raised by cuttings. Height, 3 ft. to 4 ft. Abies (Spruce Firs).—Among these ornamental conifers mention may be made of the beautiful Japanese Spruce Ajanensis, which grows freely in... more...

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... more...

THE PREFACEto all well minded. Art hath her first originall out of experience, which therefore is called the Schoole-mistresse of fooles, because she teacheth infallibly, and plainely, as drawing her knowledge out of the course of Nature, (which neuer failes in the generall) by the senses, feelingly apprehending, and comparing (with the helpe of the minde) the workes of nature; and as in all other... more...

I THE WAYS OF THE WIND "Out of the veins of the world comes the blood of me;The heart that beats in my side is the heart of the sea;The hills have known me of old, and they do not forget;Long ago was I friends with the wind; I am friends with it yet."—Gerald Gould." Whenever a piece of the land is to be set apart for a garden, two mighty rulers must be consulted as to the boundaries. When... more...

COMPOSITION My chief reason for confining these four talks to the outdoor sketch is because I have been an outdoor painter since I was sixteen years of age; have never in my whole life painted what is known as a studio picture evolved from memory or from my inner consciousness, or from any one of my outdoor sketches. My pictures are begun and finished often at one sitting, never more than three... more...

PREFACE. The following pages apply only to those English writers on gardening who are deceased. That there have been portraits taken of some of those sixty-nine English writers, whose names first occur in the following pages, there can be no doubt; and those portraits may yet be with their surviving relatives or descendants. I am not so presumptuous as to apply to the following most slight memorials,... more...