Close to the House 
course. Unfortunately, however, they are 
usually flower - beds filled with annuals or 
tender ornamental plants. They look bet- 
ter, perhaps, than utter nakedness, although 
when the choice is a particularly tasteless 
one even as much as this cannot be granted. 
In the first place, what has been said of an- 
nual creepers applies equally to tender plants 
of other sorts— the work is done, the effect 
is produced, for the season merely. When 
winter comes, nakedness returns in a worse 
shape than if no flowers had been planted ; 
the house stands, not even upon grass, but on 
a line of empty earth which makes its want 
of harmony with its surroundings most pain- 
fully apparent. And then in the spring the 
labor of clothing its base must be begun 
again. In the second place flower-beds are 
too monotonous. We need more variety of 
form ; we need to diversify the clothing 
green by massing it, by carrying it up in 
certain places higher than in others, and by 
spreading it out here and there to connect or 
group with other plantations in the vicinity. 
What we want to mitigate is that rigid for- 
mality of architectural features which does 
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