58 COMMON SENSE GARDENS 



sprinkling the brown earth with their welcome 

 bloom. It is a good plan to have the garden con- 

 nected with the front or back porch, or with the 

 piazza, or even better to have the floor of the 

 piazza flush with the garden path, or with a grass 

 terrace from whence a few steps will lead you into 

 the garden. A good formula for the size of the 

 garden is "half as wide as it is long." 



Sunlight is absolutely necessary for the health 

 of the majority of flowers, so that a sunny posi- 

 tion should be chosen for the garden if luxuriance 

 and brilliance of bloom are to be looked for. 

 There is nothing quite so disheartening as trying 

 to coax flowers to bloom in semi-shade. It is 

 well if the garden is so situated that for a short 

 time at least in the morning every nook and cor- 

 ner will be penetrated by the clear, health-giving 

 sunlight, for such a mild tonic is not injurious to 

 even shade-loving plants, and its benefits cannot 

 be overestimated. Sunlight seems to be essential 

 to the most cheerful forms of both plant and ani- 

 mal life, and can be replaced by nothing else. 



If space permits, and there is a shady corner, it 

 is a good thing to have a garden house or a bench 



