22 SATURDAY IN MY GARDEN 



but at some considerable expense to have the rubbish carted away, 

 to design anew your misshapen and disfigured garden plot, and 

 to bring it by hard work and persevering effort into a condition 

 in which your choicest plants will thrive, and your eyes not be 

 shocked by the crude legacies of the speculative builder. 



But before settling finally upon the design and plan of a 

 garden whether it be the miniature park of the country house, 

 or the diminutive plot behind a suburban villa, does not greatly 

 matter it is well to have fixed clearly in the mind the purposes 

 to which the garden is to be put. Is utility to be the guiding 

 principle ? Is the production of vegetables for culinary purposes, 

 or the growing of flowering plants with the sole object of stripping 

 them of their bloom at the earliest possible moment, to be the 

 goal at which to aim ? Then it were far better to adopt the 

 methods of the market gardener, to pay little attention to the 

 ultimate garden picture, and to grow flowers, as one grows vege- 

 tables, in conventional rows, so that as little space may be occupied 

 by their serried ranks as is consistent with their good health and 

 well-being. 



But where the garden is to be transformed into a beautiful 

 setting for the home it will be necessary to keep other considera- 

 tions than the successful culture of perfect flowers in view. The 

 ideal garden is that which at a first embracing glance satisfies the 

 artistic sense of the beholder. If there be any feature of it out 

 of proportion, which arrests the eye and detains it to the ex- 

 clusion of everything else, then is the garden wrongly planned 

 and ill-balanced. Details will afterwards claim attention, but 

 these, if the plan be well considered, will not be exaggerated ; 

 they will be in keeping with the scale of the garden, and will 

 contribute to and not detract from the harmonious character of 

 the picture. In the designing of gardens too much attention is 

 sometimes paid to the ground-plan, and not enough to elevation 

 and perspective. And here the art of the landscape gardener 

 must be brought into play. In the case of a large garden every 

 effort should be made, in shaping its outline, to bring it into 

 conformity with its environment. The value of trees in this 



