8 MANUAL OF GARDENING 
ornamental grasses and castor beans; these plants are to pro- 
duce effects quite foreign to the expression of a northern land- 
scape, and they are usually at their best and are most luxuriant 
when overtaken by the fall frosts. 
Now, the home gardener usually relies on plants that more 
or less come and go with the seasons. He pieces out and 
extends the season, to be sure; but a garden with pansies, 
pinks, sweet william, roses, sweet peas, petunias, marigolds, 
salpiglossis, sweet sultan, poppies, zinnias, asters, cosmos, 
and the rest, is a progress-of-the-season garden, nevertheless; 
and if it is a garden of herbaceous perennials, it still more 
completely expresses the time-of-year. 
My reader will now consider, perhaps, “whether he would 
have his garden accent and heighten his natural year from 
spring to fall, or whether he desires to thrust into his year a 
feeling of another order of vegetation. Either is allowable; 
but the gardener should distinguish at the outset. 
I wish to suggest to my reader, also, that it is possible for 
the garden to retain some interest even in the winter months. 
I sometimes question whether it is altogether wise to clear 
out the old garden stems too completely and too smoothly in 
the fall, and thereby obliterate every mark of it for the winter 
months; but however this may be, there are two ways by 
which the garden year may be extended: by planting things 
that bloom very late in fall and others that bloom very early 
in spring; by using freely, in the backgrounds, of bushes and 
trees that have interesting winter characters. 
The plan of the grounds (see Plate II). 
One cannot expect satisfaction in the planting and develop- 
ing of a home area unless he has a clear conception of what is 
to be done. This necessarily follows, since the pleasure that 
one derives from any enterprise clepends chiefly on the definite- 
ness of his ideals and his ability to develop them. The home- 
