Evening star., 1933-01-12
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

What can be done about the garden
at this time?
Not much, it must be admitted. but
the mental eye can see great many
things.
These are pictures.
They are plans.
There is one school of thought which
insists that planning is better than
doing, on the theory that it is better
to travel hopefully than to arrive
No doubt there is some fallacy in
this, as in most of the general state
ments, which are susceptible to varia-
tions, after all.
Good plans, capable of being carried
cut, lose something If they are not
pushed to completion, and this even
If the end is not all that might be
desired.
The trouble with most plans lies not
SO much in their ultimate failure to
come up to expectations, as in their
purely human overbuilding in the first
place.
Normally, mankind expects too much.
It is never satisfied with something
good, but is forever raving about big
ger and better" as if there were some
complete magic in mere mathematical
progression.
Surely the urge in mankind to bet
ter his best is large enough without a
recourse to the mumbo- jumbo OF a
boastful phraseology.
Plans, to be good plans should be
tempered with common sense, and this
means that they must be built on a
basis of not expecting too much.
In the garden this sensible philoso-
ply has a very large place, for it Is
here that every one is a real master
of his fate, the captain of his soul.
If the pictures the home gardener
paints at this time of the year are not
too vividly colored, he will stand a
much better chance of realizing them
If he builds up an impossible mental
picture of English glades, and the like
which take years Of expert work, to
say nothing of many dollars, to bring
them to completion, he will find that
in the Summer he is going to be dis
appointed.
Now there are distinctly too many
ways of being disappointed in this
great and teeming world to add to the
number deliberately, and with malice
aforethought.
The average gardener ought to face
the fact that he Is no Burbank: That
great and lamented man was unique.
Nor Is he, in all likelihood, a land
scape gardener Of any particular pre-
tentions.
He may know what he likes" as he
says, but the chances are that he
really isn't sure about it, after all.
Some chance grouping around his
yard forever destroys that illusion
Where he had planned nothing in par
ticular, a beauty nook grew. 1t took
form by itself, and without heed to
him or his previous planning.
The plants not only grew well there
but they grew in such a way that he
instantly recognized the creation OF
something he had never planned, nor
even dreamed Of.
1t was art.
The creation of art, in the garden
is often the result of pure chance.
Nature Is an artist, too.
She is, indeed, the original artist
without whom there is no art, IN the
final analysis.
Every home gardener recognizes this
that is one very good reason why he
should not strive too hard for a pre-
conceived effect. I
Often the effects he gets by lucky
break will far outshine those over
whose creations he labored so long.
There is no gainsaying that Nature
has way of stepping in and creating
her own effects, even in the cultivated
garden where the human occupant