fragments that have actually been imported from Europe, but extends to repro- 

 ductions of architectural detail, originally charming because of their harmonious 

 settings, yet which fail to produce the same effect in totally different surroundings. 

 Indeed it is because they exhibit as they do the adaptation and alteration of the 

 work of other lands to suit our own American surroundings, requirements, and 

 tastes that makes a study of the illustrations of this book so interesting. 



Once erected and complete, a building can be left measurably to itself; and 

 indeed time will increase its beauties, for time softens and mellows its lines with- 

 out destroying them. This is not equally true of the garden : age, and age only, 

 certainly can develop many of its greatest charms, but it will show the effects 

 of neglect all too rapidly, and a garden requires therefore not only art in him 

 who designs it, but the constant watchful skill of the gardener who cares for it, 

 if it is to grow, as it should, perennially more lovely. A landscape gardener 

 may lay out and design many gardens, but it is not within his power to bring 

 many to perfection ; for when his constructive work is done and the first year's 

 planting arranged, he has often to leave the perfecting of his work to the owner, 

 or to the gardener whom the owner may employ. One who wishes to have a 

 garden, then, should be prepared to work long and late, and to give it his best 

 attention, otherwise he will be at the mercy of his gardener's taste. 



The designing of the garden is, of course, only, a part of the problem, and 

 perhaps the part least difficult to accomplish well. The ultimate success or failure 

 of the result will depend on the proper choice of plants and on their combi- 

 nations of color. No matter how good the architectural accessories may be, 

 no matter how perfect the proportions of the garden itself, if the beds be bare 

 or the colors crude and discordant the garden will lack its chief beauty, for, after 

 all, a garden is, it should be remembered, primarily a place in which to grow 

 flowers; the rest is but the frame. 



First and foremost in importance, then, are the flowers ; but they should not 

 be looked on as so many beautiful specimens that need but to he planted to grow 

 and blossom. The garden ought to be more than a museum of one's favorite 

 blooms, where the beauty and fragrance of each may be admired in succession, 

 but where each, except in some haphazard way, does not contribute to the total 

 effect of the whole. However beautiful in themselves, the flowers should be con- 

 sidered as elements in the design, and should be so arranged that, as they succeed 

 each other all summer long, each shall add to the general composition ; that is 

 to say, to the effectiveness of the garden as a whole, even if it be but by some 

 tangled, rampant growth. Not only should all the varying combinations of colors, 



