146 The Landscape Gardening Book 



Yet the rose enthusiast is not balked by it. For want of the 

 best solution, though, I am bound to say that the beauty of most 

 rose gardens is very seriously impaired; for even with roses 

 blooming all around, the eye instinctively longs for something 

 more refreshing and pleasing than bare earth, beneath them. 

 The one satisfactory solution for the rose garden is sunken beds 

 with grass walks dividing them; and this is likewise the vege- 

 table garden's redemption — this, and that beautiful order which 

 is the first law of all things. A vegetable garden, to develop 

 the highest beauty, must be perfect in its formality and balanced 

 symmetry. 



Beds lowered six inches below the general level, with turf 

 walks four feet wide, outlined with low flower borders for main 

 divisions; and walks of a foot less width, similarly edged or not, 

 for subdivisions, will produce an effect that no one who has not 

 tried it, nor seen it tried, can conceive possible with such 

 respected but socially vmcultivated plants as beets, lettuce, 

 radishes, salsify and the like. Plan such a garden on paper as 

 carefully as any landscape, centering it on some division of the 

 house if possible. If this is not practical let a walk leading to it 

 be its axis, and plan from this. 



Make its form whatever the space permits ; it will not matter 

 whether it is a square or a rectangle, if it is planned on an axis 

 ninning either way. Do not over-elaborate the design nor 

 introduce intricate forms in the beds — this is bad taste, whether 

 flowers or vegetables are to fill them — and be careful to arrange 

 so that the low-growing vegetables shall occupy the central 

 positions, with the taller kinds at or near the garden botindaries. 

 Perfect orderliness must guide the planting of every seed sown, 

 and immaculate neatness must reign in the garden at planting 

 and perpetually thereafter as it grows. 



