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Planning Your Garden
Sunshine, the life and soul of the vegetable kingdom, and the very first necessity for the flower, must have full access to our beds and borders, and this is only to be contrived by placing them where the sunlight can reach them. Therefore it is a necessary preliminary to the planning of a small garden to observe which parts of it enjoy full sunshine and which parts lurk in perpetual shadow. The north side of the house or of a garden wall, in northern latitudes, receives no sunlight, and permanent shadows may be cast by trees and buildings on neighboring premises. These shadows are as rocks to the careful navigator, things to be given a wide berth, unless circumstances (as in the case of redundant trees) permit of our bodily removing their cause.
The Factors In Detail
THE question of site is a highly important one from the gardener's standpoint. In acquiring a home so many considerations carry weight with the purchaser that it is not always possible for him to be over-fastidious about the garden; though, if he have the choice between two or more houses, in other respects equally desirable, he will naturally decide upon that one which has the best garden site. If the house has been previously occupied he will find the garden already made, after a fashion; if not, the same may hold good. On the other hand he may find a stretch of virgin soil awaiting his good pleasure to give it shape. Whatever may have been done before he takes possession should not deter him from starting de novo, with the object of securing the best possible arrangement of the outlines before he commences to plant it.
In considering the desirability of a garden site under these circumstances the main thing is to see that the plot receives a fair measure of sunshine. With a house facing south, it is not possible to avoid a considerable shadow from the house itself, but intelligent planning will meet this case. A garden surrounded by a high wall also will have the disadvantage of the wall shadows on the southern boundaries.
Naturally such questions arise most often in connection with town and suburban gardens where houses and gardens adjoin. In the open country different considerations may present themselves. Most generally the country plot has no lack of sunshine.
But other disabilities may exist, amongst which the absence of shelter may be the most important one. The tenant, therefore, should see how the site lies, both in relation to the prevailing winds and to the cold winds of winter and spring.
