House <y Garden 
— It is as sequestered as the limits of the 
garden will allow. The flower garden should 
he placed with that secret gaiety —if not bare¬ 
faced effrontery—with which the master of 
the house plans the labyrinthine seclusion of 
his “den;” and so should the Mistress of 
the Garden seek to shield her flower nook 
from the inquisitive eyes of strangers. Not 
that their respective “dens” will elude the 
charmed circle of the family gathering, but 
only that this circle shall not be chilled by 
the frequent or disagreeable intrusion of the 
outsider. For are not the pleasures of the 
“garden den”—there are the broad and 
ample beds — what matters the selection, so 
the flowers be of personal choice; what mat¬ 
ters the order, so there be profusion. The 
very flowers themselves will, in ambitious 
indifference to prescribed bounds, fairly 
obliterate the so carefully planned walks. 
To offer a “select list” of herbaceous flow¬ 
ers would be a positive impertinence—would 
be to dogmatize upon the classics of litera¬ 
ture. So, with two suggestions, let us leave 
the care and arrangement of the sweet flow¬ 
ers to the fair Mistress of the Garden ; for 
SKETCH OF A TERRACED GARDEN 
ILLUSTRATING THE DIVISIONS AND LEVELS SUGGESTED IN THE TEXT 
Drawn by Geo. F. Pentecost, Jr. 
flower garden essentially dependent upon its 
seclusion? Such a site once secured, the 
battle is more than half won—for the rest 
is but a labor of love. 
Like the den when first possessed by its 
owner, there are the straight and ample 
shelves, and there upon the floor are the 
books. He does not require, would not 
have, the assistance of a professional libra¬ 
rian, to systemize his books. He prefers 
his own disorder. To him it is the best 
possible order; each book has its place, and 
he knows it, if no other does. So with the 
can there be anything more dolorous than 
the stiff, cut-and-dried color harmonies of 
the pedantic florist? First, let the flowers 
be so massed that each bed will have its full 
quota of each month’s blossoms, that there 
may be no bed without its share of bright¬ 
ness throughout the entire summer. There 
is no sadder sight than a flower garden with 
here and there a death-stricken patch with¬ 
out a bloom. Second, let the garden be 
well sprinkled with evergreen shrubs, for 
when the flowers are gone and the beds are 
buried beneath the snows of winter, these 
