CHAPTER I 
THE SITE 
Sun and shade — Background — Relation to surroundings — 
Proportion. 
Few men are privileged to choose a site for 
their garden, for it is rare to find the man who 
builds the house he lives in. From the en- 
tirely wrong aspects of many gardens it would 
appear that the garden was an after-thought 
of the builder, who in many cases chose a 
hillside with a view, and did not particularly 
care if the garden were on a north-east slope 
or not. Occasionally in some very old house 
is found an ideally sheltered and sunny garden, 
and in many of the quite new houses the 
garden and the house are carefully planned 
with due relation to aspect. But the garden 
of the in-between period is just a haphazard 
affair that one makes the best of. Should one, 
however, be able to choose a site for his 
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