46 CALIFORNIA GARDEN FLOWERS. 



many checker-board or pin-wheel apartments for flowering plants. Our 

 suburban landscapes show few stiff terraces, trees and shrubs in lines of 

 battle or other plants arrayed to reveal the hand, of man as clearly as a 

 tailor-made costume. On the other hand, our home grounds and parks 

 display natural slopes, tree clumps, shrub clusters and flower masses ar- 

 ranged to suggest the work of nature and conceal the work of the 

 designer which is much higher art. 



A very hopeful sign that the best standards of taste will prevail in the 

 future development of the State is found in the fact that the University 

 of California has established in its College of Agriculture systematic 

 instruction in floriculture and home ground ornamentation, and has also 

 provided instruction in correspondence courses which require no fees. 

 There is also increasing in California a qualified profession of landscape 

 architecture, both men and women being ready to furnish plans and speci- 

 fications for home ground design and planting at moderate cost. Their 

 services are very desirable, even in affairs of small area, while in larger 

 undertakings they will notably increase the owner's joy in his improve- 

 ments, for they surely can throw round the life of a man an environment 

 of pictures, near and afar, opening vistas, veiling ugliness, and displaying 

 plants, trees, slopes, rocks, waters each with its own best qualities and 

 relations. 



What all these things mean, and their importance in garden design, one 

 can learn by reading one of many books on the subject which are now 

 available and of which, for beginners and self-working amateurs, the small 

 treatise* 'by Kemp, an English garden designer, as revised by Professor 

 Waugh, seems to us best and most helpful, both in thought and practical 

 wor<ki It is full of drawings suggestive of good ideas and construction 

 details. 



But though the writer has such respect for the profession of garden 

 design and is urgent in advice to all having suburban residence or country 

 villa sites to develop, to place their planning in professional hands, he 

 cannot refrain from stating a few things which impress him as an amateur, 

 for he has no professional connection whatever with the subject. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR LAYING-OUT. 



Among the principles to be observed, or the conditions to be secured, 

 several may be mentioned, with concrete suggestions to render them intel- 

 ligible and to support their desirability. 



Everyone who undertakes to improve his own home grounds should first 

 make a plan, or map, with pencil and paper, with an eraser to facilitate 

 changes. The beginner will find it convenient to use cross-ruled paper 

 indicating squares of half an inch, which may be used to represent ten or 

 twenty feet of linear ground-distance, according to the area he desires to 



* Kemp's Landscape Gardening, by F. A. Waugh, fully illustrated. Published by 

 John Wiley & Sons. Postpaid $1.50, from Pacific Rural Press, San Francisco. 



