CHAPTER IX 
Flowers 
I T is, I know, a reversal of the order which 
the garden beginner’s enthusiasm takes to 
wait until everything else has been dis- 
posed of before coming even to the considera- 
tion of flowers. But if I have succeeded at all 
In developing through these pages the “ gar- 
den idea,” as I conceive it, you will appreciate 
by this time that the garden is the thing; and 
that all that goes to make up the garden is 
secondary — even the trees and shrubs and 
flowers. Of course there would be no garden 
without vegetation; but our custom has always 
been to work from the vegetation backward — 
a practice which never can give the harmoni- 
ously balanced and beautiful final result that 
the more logical method of working up to the 
vegetation, from the bare ground, assures. 
So the garden and house are designed as a 
unit; all that enters into this design is con- 
sidered and worked out before plants are 
hardly thought of. After all this is done, af- 
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