LAYING OUT THE GARDEN 19 
Time, that is to say the amount of leisure at 
one’s disposal, is of the utmost importance. It 
takes time not only to make a garden, but to main- 
tain and enjoy it. The moment that the garden 
uses up more time than can be given to it com- 
fortably, it gets beyond its province—play becomes 
work. And a flower garden is no place for drud- 
gery. Figure out then how much time you can 
spend, comfortably, not merely during the season 
just in sight but for at least a few years to come; 
and cut your garden cloth accordingly. 
Climate is safely disposed of only by the elimina- 
tion of all but the really dependable flowers, re- 
membering always that in some places hot, dry 
summers are as much of a problem as severely 
cold winters in others. Soil disadvantages can be 
remedied wherever expense does not stand in the 
way. Winds and the force of the summer sun are 
broken by the planting of shrubs and vines. Little 
or no sun is harder to get around, though the last 
resort of a shady garden is far from being one to 
be altogether deplored; sometimes such a garden 
is a place of genuine delight. 
All this figuring out what is best to be done is 
prime mental sport for long winter evenings. 
Those are rare times for the planning of gardens— 
when the fire burns bright and you can sit and think, 
devise and revise, with the comfortable feeling 
that spring is still well in the future—that there 
will be no call to dig on the morrow. 
Hurry, indeed, is the last thing to enter into the 
