GRADES, LEVELS, CONTOURS 49 



garden schemes. A little more constructive work 

 out of doors is necessary in the making of re- 

 taining walls, perhaps, and steps, but these 

 once made are permanent, and the different 

 levels afford real gardening space. 



Contrast such a treatment with the unhappy, 

 barren, uninteresting effect which is all that the 

 most carefully smoothed slope achieves, and 

 contrast its upkeep, too, with the difficulties of 

 maintaining such a slope, of keeping it grassed 

 and mowed — indeed of keeping it there at all 

 under the wash of heavy rains and the freez- 

 ing and thawing of winter — and there is not a 

 single point in favor of the latter. Yet so bent 

 upon leveling and smoothing are a great many 

 architects and their patrons too, that not one 

 house in fifty, big or little, do we find following 

 the lead of the land. Which is a pretty large 

 percentage of wrong beginnings and, taken in 

 the aggregate, a startling waste — as well as a 

 discouraging state of affairs to the landscape 

 architect, called in later. For the mistakes in, 

 and of, the house make the best work out of 

 doors impossible, as I think I have already 

 shown in the previous chapter. A garden, you 

 know, grows out from the house. 



So start right. Find the lead and then follow 

 it — and until it is found do not take a step. For 



