16 The American Flower Garden 



the situation is sheltered, but where the house will be convenient 

 to the railroad station, the school, our friends, or the golf links; 

 or where a special bargain in real estate may be had, or where 

 the greatest number of windows will command the finest views, 

 or where the prevailing summer breezes will sweep through the 

 living-rooms, or where they will be protected from winter winds, 

 or where the sunshine may pour health into them, or where perfect 

 drainage and a water supply are best assured. These and a 

 hundred other practical reasons may dominate the selection of a 

 building site. Relying upon the bounty of nature to provide 

 embellishments for every spot on earth man has yet decided to 

 live upon and she has plants for every place and purpose we 

 have been too apt to ignore the garden s claims until the eleventh 

 hour and to concentrate all our thought, oftentimes all our money 

 plus a mortagage, upon the house itself, leaving little or nothing 

 for the setting of the home picture, in which, after all, the house 

 should be merely the most important detail. 



But if there is to be a union of the house and the landscape 

 into which it obtrudes a happy marriage between the house and 

 the garden the help of the artist-gardener is needed most of all 

 before the house is started, I had almost said before the land is 

 bought. For it is the design of a place as a whole that is the main 

 thing, whether the size of the picture that is to be wrought out is 

 reckoned in miles, acres, or square feet. If the home-maker 

 cannot afford to execute the whole plan at the outset, it is all the 

 more reason that he should possess such a design and proceed 

 methodically to do what he can, year by year, to execute it 

 permanently, rather than waste his money on costly experiments. 

 A rich man can afford mistakes; a poor one cannot. Moving soil, 

 for example, is surprisingly expensive. A cart-load of it dumped 



