Situation and Design 17 



on a lawn looks but little larger than an ant-hill, and the equivalent 

 of a landscape architect's fee might be easily wasted in an unintelli- 

 gent disposal of the top soil alone. A plan which involves annual 

 upheavals and repeated efforts upon the same piece of land and 

 the incessant care of a skilled gardener, is a very poor plan indeed 

 for a man of modest means. Skyrocket effects of coleus, geraniums 

 and other bedding plants from the florist are rarely desirable in 

 any case, but usually the novice's first undirected efforts are to get 

 them. All plants require some attention, but not necessarily 

 annual attention; certainly not annual renewal. A permanent 

 planting of hardy shrubs and perennials has all the artistic qualities 

 and the practical ones as well. Since it takes years for newly 

 planted trees to look thoroughly at home, delay in setting them 

 out means a needless prolonging of the raw, unfinished state of 

 the place. The era of vanity or was it parsimony? when 

 every man presumed to be his own lawyer, his own doctor, or 

 architect, or garden designer, is happily being superseded by an 

 age of specialists whom the wise consult more and more. 



It goes without saying that the professional gardener to be 

 chosen should be practical as well as an artist one who has had 

 too much experience with growing things to advise planting elms 

 on a dry, sandy hill-top or tea roses near Quebec. Enormous 

 sums have been wasted on rhododendrons alone, through attempting 

 to grow in this country imported foreign hybrids which soon give 

 up the struggle for existence in our uncongenial climate; whereas 

 lasting and equally beautiful effects may be produced from hardy 

 hybrids of our native rhododendron race. Costly mistakes are 

 made annually in planting yews and certain other European ever- 

 greens. Manchuria and Siberia, with climatic conditions similar 

 to our own, are likely to yield far more valuable treasures for the 



