the garden-maker must decide where to compose them, in other words, he 

 must first select the best situation for his garden ; and this is oftentimes no 

 easy matter. 



If the garden is to be formal, with straight lines or geometrical curves, its 

 formality must of necessity find some excuse in its surroundings, - - a straight road, 

 a terrace, a wall, or, what is yet simpler, the straight lines of a house. Often 

 when it would be otherwise difficult to make the house harmonize with the sur- 

 rounding landscape, the garden, by prolonging the formal lines, softening them 

 with vegetation, and tying them in with the landscape beyond, perfectly accom- 

 plishes the desired result. When there is no formal framework, no formal lines 

 are necessary. One of the most charming gardens in America (though unfor- 

 tunately not represented in this book because it is of that type which, being 

 largely dependent upon color, loses almost all its charm in a photograph) is at Bar 

 Harbor, Maine. With woods for a background and merely an irregular lawn for 

 a path, it is more charming than any walled or formal garden that could have 

 been put there; but only an artist could have made it, and it requires the con- 

 stant care of an artist to keep it up year by year, for none of its elements is per- 

 manent, and lines and grouping must annually be laid out anew. A garden of 

 this kind, forming as it does a foreground to the natural scenery beyond, need 

 not necessarily be in close proximity to the house ; in fact, to attempt to make 

 a garden serve as a foreground to the main vista from the house is often a mis- 

 take, for the bright colors of the flowers may kill the more delicate tones of a 

 distant scene, whereas these same rich colors might give decided interest to a 

 less important view. 



The situation of the garden once selected, when it seems to have been 

 placed where it will add to the attractiveness of the house or grounds, and where 

 conditions of soil seem to be satisfactory, or are capable of being made so by 

 enriching or draining, when questions of sunlight for the flowers and shelter from 

 the winds have been settled, then the problems of size and proportions may 

 be considered. It would naturally be folly to make a garden so large that its 

 maintenance and care will become a perennial burden, in itself a sufficient 

 practical reason for planning the garden and the house in proportion to each 

 other, so that the garden shall become, as it were, an outdoor room to the house, 

 larger than any inside because it should give the sense of freedom and of sun- 

 light and air, but still small in the case of a small house, and proportionately 

 large in the case of a large one. 



The direction of the garden with reference to the house is also important. 



