Natural Features 7 



a grouping of marshmallow and tall, reedy grasses ; and not the 

 least of the joys of this garden is its startling unexpectedness. 



All of which points a moral, does it not? — a moral that leads 

 to a certain very definite rule, which I would urge every maker 

 of gardens, actual or expectant, to learn by heart and deeply to 

 impress upon his inner mind. Here it is, briefly and simply: 

 Plan and plant a garden always along the line of least resistance. 



What with the rain when it ought to be dry and the drought 

 when it ought to rain ; the slugs, and the blights of varying form 

 but unvarying fatality ; the moths, and the bugs, and the beetles, 

 and the borers, and all the other unpleasant things which lurk 

 around, determined to evade the wariest and the wisest of those 

 who plant either for pleasure or profit, gardening is one of this 

 life's most tantalizing uncertainties, the best way we can fix it. 

 Therefore we owe it to ourselves and to the patch of ground we 

 seek to beautify, to mitigate this unhappy state of affairs as much 

 as lies in our power — to make our heads save our hands and our 

 backs, and incidentally our garden hopes — by teaching us to 

 garden according to Nature's laws instead of against them. 



So we come to the question which should always be the first 

 consideration: what has Nature done with the land where you 

 are going to build your garden? Before a stone or brick of a 

 building is laid or even the style of the house is determined upon, 

 this should receive attention; for on a property of any size at 

 all it governs not only the kind of garden one is to have but also 

 the location of the buildings and their "kind." 



A wild garden ought not to be actually under one's windows, 

 while a formal garden very appropriately may — and the set of 

 conditions which calls for the former imperatively, will, quite as 

 imperatively, preclude the possibility of the latter, or vice versa, 

 thus affecting the position of both house and garden. Plan 



