122 The Landscape Gardening Book 



be advanced for the garden form known as a "border." The 

 name alone impUes that. 



A border follows something, borders something, ornaments 

 something ; is an attribute of something greater than itself. It 

 is secondary to some more important thing, to a conception of a 

 whole — in the case of a garden, secondary to some particular por- 

 tion of it, taken as a whole. Possibly it follows a walk or a 

 drive, or the side of a building, or the line of a terrace, or the 

 margin of a lawn. It really does not matter what it follows 

 so long as it follows something. So long as it is truly a border, 

 be sure that it cannot go wrong ; the limitations of that definite 

 name will keep it what it ought to be. 



It may be straight and narrow, like the path of virtue, or it 

 may dawdle along in all manner of curves, according to the 

 thing it follows. That is a matter of secondary importance that 

 will settle itself; likewise its length is pre-determined by cir- 

 cumstances and sometimes, though not always, its width. A 

 border that can be reached from both sides may of course be 

 wider than one which must be tended from only one. 



Generally speaking, it is safe to say that walks within private 

 groimds ought always to have a border, on one side anyway, if not 

 on both — the exigencies of the situation will decide this. The 

 hedge, fence or lattice divisions between different parts of the 

 grovmds also invite such treatment, invariably. I should, how- 

 ever, hardly call the planting of perennials in the foreground of 

 shrubbery, a border in themselves, for they are placed inter- 

 mittently when thus used, and only when they and the shrubs 

 are considered together, does a "border" result. 



Any wild roadside, where Nature has been al-lowed to have 

 her way undisturbed, is usually an unrivalled object lesson in 

 planting, for both color and mass. One of the loveliest borders 



