52 SUBURBAN GARDENS 
schemes. A little more constructive work out 
of doors is necessary, in the making of retain- 
ing walls, perhaps, and steps, but these once 
made are permanent, and the different levels 
afford real gardening space. 
Contrast such a treatment with the unhappy, 
barren, uninteresting effect which is all that the 
most carefully smoothed slope achieves, and 
contrast its upkeep, too, with the difficulties of 
maintaining such a slope, of keeping it grassed 
and mowed — indeed of keeping it there at all 
under the wash of heavy rains and the freez- 
ing and thawing of winter — and there is not a 
single point in favor of the latter. Yet so bent 
upon leveling and smoothing are the majority 
of architects and their patrons alike, that not 
one house in fifty, big or little, do we find 
“ following the lead of the land.” Which is 
a pretty large percentage of wrong beginnings 
and, taken in the aggregate, a startling waste 
— as well as a discouraging state of affairs to 
the landscape architect, called in later. For 
the mistakes in, and of, the house make the 
best work out of doors impossible, as I think 
I have already shown in the previous chapter. 
A garden, you know, grows out, from the house. 
So start right. Find the lead and follow it 
— and until it is found do not take a step. For 
