DESIGNING A GARDEN 31 
so well known that time spent in advice con- 
cerning it would be wasted. 
First, let us take the attitude that the 
ground plot, or plot of ground, right up to its 
boundaries, is a plane or flat surface whereon 
some interesting motif is to be executed. Re- 
gard it in the same way that the cover of a 
book or the top of a box or any other sharply 
defined object would be regarded, if it fell to 
your lot to ornament such; disregard entirely 
at first the fact that it is ground, that it is your 
suburban lot. 
It is not necessary to be an artist, nor even 
a student of design, in order to observe one or 
two things concerning it which are fun- 
damentals. One of these is the presence of a 
border in all designs of definite limitation. 
All-over patterns lack the border, but other 
designs, if they are good ones, do not. It 
may be only a broad line or a series of parallel 
lines, but it is invariably present when the de- 
sign is made to conform to a certain place and 
space and form, framing the figures of it, 
holding them strongly together. So a border 
must confine the design that is to be executed 
upon the ground. What this border is to be 
made of need not be considered just yet; that 
there is to be an enclosure of one kind or an- 
