1 56 LANDSCAPE-GARDENING 



Happily, in designing flower-gardens and other 

 landscape work, there is more freedom than exists 

 in architecture, and one may take advantage of any 

 charming feature pertaining to the lands selected 

 for a home. Some persons believe that because 

 one builds an Italian house, there should be an 

 Italian garden, forgetting the dissimilarity of cli- 

 mate, soil, and topography, and the impossibility 

 of raising cypresses and other plants found in the 

 formal gardens of Italy,- or even plants resembling 

 them. There is more reason for imitating a co- 

 lonial garden, because the climate and soil in this 

 country now are substantially the same that they 

 were one or two hundred years ago. There is a 

 fascination in the flowers that our grandmothers 

 raised, aside from their intrinsic beauty. Still there 

 have been changes which would naturally lead to 

 variation in gardens and home grounds. When the 

 country was new, it was nearly all covered with 

 woods, and an opening covered partly with a vel- 

 vety lawn and planted with the flowers that had 

 been brought from England, Holland, France, Ger- 

 many, and Sweden seemed the most attractive of 

 home surroundings. Now that the woods have 

 largely disappeared from those regions where there 



