20 
CHILDREN'S GARDENS 
must remember is, that in your garden, if it is 
a small piece of border, everything must be 
very neatly kept; the plants must not get wild 
and straggling ; some may require “ tying 
up,” some “pegging down,” so as to make 
plenty of room to grow as many nice things 
as possible. 
This is very necessary also if your garden 
is to be a miniature formal one—that is, if your 
piece of ground is laid out in an even, straight 
way, even though it is not a piece of border, 
against a wall. 
There are of course endless variations of 
the kind of design you can have, but the chief 
point in all must be that the pattern is what is 
called symmetrical or regular. My own first 
garden was a formal one, and though I by no 
means advise children to copy it as being the 
best form, still it will be a good example of 
that style. The size was about 40 feet long 
and 22 feet at the widest part, and the shape 
of a half-moon. One side was protected by 
a high clipped laurel hedge, the other side was 
divided from the path belonging to the regular 
garden by a straight strip of grass, which was 
kept mown, sometimes by the gardeners with 
a mowing machine, but frequently by tame 
rabbits or guinea-pigs being penned on it sys¬ 
tematically until they had eaten it down. The 
