To the lovers of Beauty no branch of science offers such varied delights as that of Hearticulture; at the same time no pursuit is so full of disappointments for the inexperienced and pitfalls for the unwary. It is the study of a lifetime; no one can say he is a master of Hearticulture. Many of the most successful gardeners give it up as they become older: some from disappointment over a trifling failure, others from sheer weariness; still more take up a branch of nursery-gardening called Matrimony, which demands such close attention and care that it has come to be regarded as a profession in itself.

It has even been asserted that Matrimony is no branch of Hearticulture at all—a statement so far from the truth that it can only come from a disappointed or unsuccessful Heart Gardener. Be warned, dear reader; if you should take up this highest and most beautiful of all the branches of Hearticulture with such an erroneous idea, you are foredoomed to failure.

If this little book be the means of showing to even the least of these the error of his ways, we shall not feel that it has been made in vain.