My Ambition Grows 33 
ing and thawing, and is also an admirable fertilizer, as it 
speedily decays. Then they were refilled with a compost as 
the first beds had been. To do this I had several cartloads of 
black muck, garden loam, sand, manure and wood ashes 
hauled onto the bank near the house and dumped separately, 
and a little at a time was hoed from each into a central pile, 
which a man wheeled to the beds. The old subsoil was 
thrown over the new walls, which bounded the extension on 
the west and south, and by filling up to the level of the top on 
the outside of the walls and back to the rising bank, a new 
elevation was established. I have now done this twice, and 
have thus secured a double terrace on the west side of the 
garden, from which side the main portion presents the ap- 
pearance of a sunken garden, with the first terrace three feet 
and the second rising six or more feet above the original level. 
Effective as this arrangement is, it was conceived as a matter 
of pure utility, and a convenient means of disposing of the 
surplus earth in excavating the bank, and saved carting it off. 
It is a safe statement to make that where necessity is used as a 
guide, a certain kind of beauty inevitably follows. For this 
reason it is not well to imitate another’s work, but to follow 
where your own conditions lead. I much regretted at first 
that I had no garden plans to study for a model; but, as I now 
see my own completed, I cannot imagine it as successful in any 
other form, owing to the peculiar conformation of the land. 
It has lent itself to my convenience in the gradual exten- 
sions from year to year; it offers every condition, from full 
exposure to the sun to complete shade, of dry and moist situa- 
tions. Certain beds have been planted so as to maintain 
bloom the whole season through; others are arranged to keep 
up the appearance of bounty by maturing at a late day when 
many things are gone. Though made of units, the garden is 
composite in its structure. 
