ideas for landscaping your home, gardens, home improvement tips, water features & garden decoration

Planning Your Garden

It is best to take both factors into consideration when making the garden design, and, by means which I shall describe in detail later on, to blend flower and kitchen garden into harmony. In this way the garden vistas may be lengthened without curtailing the vegetable space, and even the tenants of the latter may be made in some measure to contribute to the garden picture, particularly if fruit is grown.

There are certain practical considerations in town and suburban gardens which demand that the vegetables should be grown in that part of the plot most remote from the house. If fruit trees be planted in the kitchen plot, the blossom in its season is valuable at a time when the flower garden is but little advanced toward its summer display.

There is only one other point to emphasize, and that has reference to garden management rather than to garden making. Yet it is worth noting. I refer to what some gardeners call "tidiness." The striving after a neat, trim, and well-kept garden is apt to lead the gardener into a ruthless trimming and pinching of plants. It is one of the things which can be too well done. The truly artistic garden is one in which the plant has full scope to develop its character. It wants elbow-room, and has no respect for artificial boundaries. It is a sin to curb and mutilate the plant because, forsooth, it pushes out its foliage across the path. Rather let it enjoy its liberty. The occasional plant which has more than repaid your care by exceeding its neighbor in vigor of growth deserves encouragement. Let it sprawl in reason. It will soften the edge of your border and redeem the straightness of its line. I would even designedly place certain plants so that they may behave in this manner.

And, lastly, beware of the too liberal pruning of trees and shrubs. Nature is always right. She gives a character to each one of her creations, which is its birthright. To trim all trees to a uniform shape, like the wooden models in a child's Noah's Ark, is to destroy their individuality and charm, and to introduce the very essence of formality into the garden.

The Rectilinear Principle

I NOW propose to enter more intimately into the practical details of garden designing. The suburban garden is usually a rectangle. Its four boundaries are straight lines, and its area is so restricted that these boundaries are only too obvious to the person standing within them.