64 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



beds would be felt by any person of taste to be inharmonious, or 

 occupied by a formal garden so precisely ordered that any change in 

 the beds would spoil the color scheme of the pattern. 



Of course there are people who would under no circumstances 

 make any real use of their home grounds except as a means of in- 

 gress and egress to and from the house, and as a foreground across 

 which they may gaze from the house at what occurs upon the street 

 or at the neighbors, and across which the house may be agreeably 

 or impressively seen by those passing on the street. For people of 

 such Umited powers of enjoyment as these, the problem of home 

 ground treatment is a comparatively simple one; but it is safe to 

 say that of the countless families living on grounds which are laid 

 out without regard to any other domestic or social usefulness than 

 the above, a large majority would get a good deal more enjoyment 

 out of their homes if they had the enterprize and the skill to adapt 

 their surroundings to various other uses suggested by their indi- 

 vidual preferences, instead of dumbly accepting a stereot^-jDcd 

 pattern of grounds which provides for nothing beyond those few 

 requirements that are common to everybody. 



In the treatment of home grounds, then, the first and controlling 

 consideration is to make them conveniently and satisfactorily usable 

 for the particular kinds of things that the family will get most 

 personal satisfaction out of. It often happens that the family or 

 different members of it would like to provide for more different 

 kinds of things than can be got into the space without serious inter- 

 ference; and in such cases it is important to look the facts in the 

 face and choose deliberately what to provide and what to forego, 

 because it frequently happens that people drift into the hopeless 

 undertaking of tr^^ing to' accomplish two incompatible purposes at 

 the same time and place, with the inevitable result of botching both; 

 as, for example, when they try on the one hand to get the charming 

 simplicity of a quiet informal lawn, and on the other hand try to 

 secure the equally charming but incompatible beauty of gay and 

 striking flower beds by setting out the latter in the midst of the 

 lawn. Some people find it very hard to learn that they cannot have 

 their cake and eat it. But it is a fact that a fair amount of imagi- 

 nation and ingenuity in planning will reconcile a surprising number 

 of different purposes and care for them all on a limited area with- 

 out ])ractical conflict or artistic discord. 



