238 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



relations of the area which is to be used as a garden. Often, as in all 

 landscape designs, topographic conditions, cleverly overcome or taken 

 advantage of, will give a greater originality and interest to the scheme 

 than the designer would be likely to get without the stimulus of the 

 difficulties. 



If the designer has the opportunity of making several gardens on 

 one estate, or if he is working for several clients in the same neighbor- 

 hood, and he does not wish to repeat an effect, he may cast about for 

 ways to give each garden some distinction of its own. The main form, 

 deliberately chosen or forced upon the designer in a general way by out- 

 side considerations, may serve as a sufficient mark of individuality, 

 though it is rare that individuality need stop with form. In any case, 

 if the main form is to be insisted on, the interior arrangement should 

 accent and display it. A square or circular garden might well have a 

 central feature and a radial direction of attention ; a long and narrow 

 garden might have features at each end with an unobstructed view 

 between them. 



The season of greatest beauty can well be the particular thing 

 pitched upon to characterize a garden. We can have a spring garden, 

 a summer garden, a fall garden. Our choice in this regard will be 

 motived by the mode of life of our client, whether he is to enjoy the 

 garden throughout the year, or whether he is to see it only at certain 

 seasons. 



The material, both the structural material, the rock used in the walls, 

 for instance, and particularly, of course, the plant material, the pre- 

 dominating planting, will put a definite stamp upon a garden : we can 

 have a wall garden, a garden of rock plants, a rose garden, a lily garden, 

 and so on. Or, we may confine ourselves to one color of flower, at least 

 for a certain season : we can have a blue garden, a white garden, a 

 pink garden, in the spring, and later in the year other colors may 

 appear. 



A garden may have a definite effect because it calls up some partic- 

 ular association, as, for instance, an old-fashioned New England gar- 

 den, with everything in it carefully chosen, carefully wrought out, to 

 increase that one associational beauty. Of course, it must have beauty 

 of form and color also in any case, but it will have all the greater unity 



