54 



use and new ones you propose to make. The remainder will 

 be what you will have for grass and flowers. The next opera- 

 tion will be to lay out the flower beds. The prevailing shapes 

 for these are the Circle, Oval, Star, Heart, Crescent, Triangle, 

 Shield, etc., while on either side of the walks the whole dis- 

 tance may be a long bed from three to four feet wide. From 

 these or other shapes select such as your taste may prefer, and 

 mark or sketch them on the paper, being careful that the 

 sizes of the be is are proportionate, and that tlie designs har- 

 monize. If when one design for the whole plot is completed, 

 examine it carefully and critically, to see that you are pleased 

 and perfectly satisfied with it; if not, then try again ; and just 

 at this time we recommend a great deal of patience, because 

 this will be more easily remedied while it is on paper than it 

 would be after the design is executed in the garden. After 

 tryiiDg until you have succeeded in producing a design that 

 you fully approve of, the next move will be to lay out the 

 garden in reality. This can now be more readily and more 

 easily done, as we now have to guide us, a design that just 

 suits your taste and your garden to a T. 



Layixg out the Gakden. With the design, spade and 

 shovel, rake, stakes, tape line, and a rope or clothes line, we 

 enter the garden. If it has not been graded or leveled to suit 

 the taste of the owner, this will be the first operation ; we all 

 know how to do this, so we only desire to whisper in your ear 

 that the surface should be a gentle slope from the house; this 

 will carry away the water, and the scene will look prettier 

 buth from the house and from the avenue. The supposition 

 i\o^ is that it is graded and that there is about twelve inches 

 of what we might call a fair garden soil covering the whole. 

 We now, according to the designs we have adopted, proceed to 

 lay out the walks or roads. If these are to be straight, all that 

 will be necessary will be to get our distances from the designs 

 and put in stakes at either end ; we can now stretch our line 

 from these stakes and drive in a stake at every eight or ten 

 feet during the whole length of the walk; but if these walks 

 are to be bending or serpentine in shape, it will be more diffi- 

 cult to lay them out correctly. It requires considerable skill 

 and some practice to mark out irregularly shaped walks or 

 flower beds without the aid of something to clearly show just 

 where the outline should be. We have found nothing more 

 advisable to recommend to our friends than a heavy rope or 

 ciothes-line ; this is always on hand, and answers the purpose ; 



