66 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



by the best gardeners), too long a look ahead must not be 

 expected of children, for experience has not yet taught them 

 foresight. As a rule they are only interested in the details of 

 the near future. And yet just such work as this should help 

 them to become excellent planners. On every occasion they 

 should be encouraged to view their grounds in imagination 

 from this angle or from that, from a window or a flight of 

 steps. Experienced gardeners, when arranging flower beds, 

 picture them as vividly as possible during the procession of 

 months, painting them in their true colors and foreseeing 

 just where gaps are likely to be left when certain plants stop 

 blooming. The best places for the permanent shrubs and vines, 

 whose beauty will often consist of berries and fruit as well as 

 blossoms, like the bittersweet and the barberry, will, as far as 

 possible, be decided now, though it is not probable that all 

 will be set out the first year, nor is this desirable. 



According to one of his friends, Saint-Gaudens had a 

 delightfully simple method for the effective laying out of 

 flower beds. He would lay down laths to indicate where the 

 paths should be, then move them nearer together or farther 

 apart to widen or narrow the paths until the *beds " looked 

 right." Carrying this practical method a bit farther, some 

 stick up bits of brush where shrubs are to be. This is, as it 

 were, "trying on the garden's dress." 1 It certainly helps 

 wonderfully in training the garden imagination. 



While children show a good deal of independence in their 

 choice of plants, they constantly ask the opinion of grown 

 people, particularly in regard to flower beds ; and their eager 

 questions open ways truly to befriend them by a few wise 

 hints, for there are some underlying principles in landscape 

 gardening which everybody should know, and which may well 

 be learned early. Some of them are embodied in the following 



1 Miss Frances Duncan. 



