50 Landscape Gardening 



also be used to support various low lean-to sheds, that may 

 happen to be needed in either of these yards, 



5. Seclusion. — Few characteristics of a garden contribute 

 more to render it agreeable than snugness and seclusion. 

 They serve to make it appear peculiarly one's own, convert- 

 ing it into a kind of sanctum. A place that has neither 

 of these quahties might almost as well be public property. 

 Those who love their garden often want to walk, work, rumi- 

 nate, read, romp, or examine the various changes and develop- 

 ments of nature in it, and to do so unobserved. All that 

 attaches us to a garden, and renders it a delightful and cher- 

 ished object, seems marred if it has no privacy. It is a 

 luxury to walk, sit, or recline at ease, on a summer's day, 

 and drink in the sights and sounds and perfumes peculiar to 

 a garden, without fear of interruption, or of dress, attitude, 

 or occupation being observed and criticized. 



Something more, however, than mere privacy is involved 

 in the idea of snugness. It includes shelter, warmth, shade, 

 agreeable seats for rest, arbors for a rural meal, and velvety 

 slopes of turf, overshadowed or variously checkered by foliage, 

 to recline upon. A room that may fitly be called snug is 

 small in its dimensions, and rather amply furnished, with its 

 window not open at any point to the public gaze. A garden, 

 likewise, to deserve the same epithet, should have its princi- 

 pal or subordinate parts of rather contracted limits, be fur- 

 nished somewhat liberally with tall-growing plants and trees, 

 which will produce some degree of shade and present an air 

 of comparative isolation. 



Where there is suflficient extent, it is probably better to have 

 one or more small nooks, or partially detached gardens of a 

 particular kind, to realize something of both snugness and 

 seclusion, and give the leading and broader portions of the 

 garden a more airy and open character. Still, in any case, 



