Romantic Gardeners

A gardener’s soul needs at least one square foot of earth, and there are poor cockneys who have not even that. When the city authorities see a window-box tied on with a string, they say you must take it down or get something strong to hold it up. What if string be all you possess? Fortunately the souls with a mere foot of soil and a bit of twine are in the minority, and most men and women have that within and about them which will respond to Mrs. Francis King’sVariety in the Little Garden and Mrs. Martha Brookes Hutcheson’sThe Spirit of the Garden. They are romantic collections of fact. Mrs. King’s romance is in the colors which spring riotously in the mind out of her prescriptions for small gardens. Mrs. Hutcheson goes more soberly toward the romantic ideal of unity and spacious perfection, and the many illustrations of her book glow in the eye of a city reader like the gorgeous vistas of a dream. Their respective books will be published June 1.