BALANCE IN THE FLOWER 

 GARDEN 



WHEN the chance to arrange the planting of 

 a formal garden of my own fell into my 

 hands, about eight years ago, I felt strongly the 

 need of advice in what I was about to do. Ad- 

 vice, however, was not forthcoming, and at the 

 outset I fell, of course, into the pit of absurdity. 

 Without any reason for so doing, I decided to 

 arrange the planting in this garden (a balanced de- 

 sign in four equal parts with eight beds in each 

 section) as though the whole were a scrap of per- 

 ennial border a few feet wide and a few feet long. 

 The ridiculous idea occurred to me to have the 

 garden a picture to be looked at from the house 

 alone. The matter of garden design was to fade 

 out of sight except with regard to the few beds 

 immediately surrounding the small central pool. 

 These were planted more or less formally, with 

 heliotrope in the four parallelograms nearest the 



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