The Livable House 



sole decoration around the base of a big house is too obvious a 

 violation of the requirements of good foundation planting not to 

 be censured. 



Flowers alone lack strength and that feeling of permanence 

 which good base planting should have, and, moreover, they are 

 out of scale with the size of the house. They need shrubs or 

 vines as a background to make them count as a mass rather than 

 as individuals, and to leave something growing in their stead 

 when they die down at the end of the season. 



By the term border planting — the second of the miscellaneous 

 sorts under the head of general planting — I mean combinations 

 of shrubs, or shrubs and trees, such as one finds planted along a 

 fence, substituted for a fence at the edge of a piece of property, 

 around a garden, or at the end of the lawn. These borders divide 

 themselves into two classes: naturalistic or woodland borders, and 

 gardenesque or suburban. 



They are two very different types, and a sharp line should be 

 drawn between them, because, in practice, distinguishing the two 

 makes all the difference between a commonplace garden and one 

 with a really individual quality; or, in bigger landscape work, the 

 contrast between a scheme grandly conceived and one which is 

 petty in spirit. 



The first sort of planting is made up of native trees and shrubs 

 — those which grow naturally along meadow hedgerows or in 

 woodland borders; this kind of border should be used away from 

 the house and the cultivated garden, in places where a transition 

 is to be effected between the wild and the cultivated, or where the 



[58] 



