I have about 40 feet of garden to erect an antenna....Could anyone tell
me if I took 2 20 feet length of twin ladder and shorted the ends
fed one side of the dipole with twin ladder and connected a 52 ohm
resistor across the other side so the tx would see a match would be
better than feeding a 40 foot endfed through an atu...
My thinking is that most of the small antenna on the market are just
dummy loads with a small amount of wire attached and appear to work so
would my 40 feet work better.. ?? ......................................

If you are trying to avoid a dummy load, a resister is the last
thing you want. It should be illegal to add resisters to otherwise
perfectly good antennas.
It's hard to comment about the antenna, as I don't know what
bands, how much height, etc... Not enuff info...
MK