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Planning Your Garden
If he has any doubts in the matter he should forego the verge, because, uncared for, it is an unsightly and wasteful feature.
How To Plan A Garden
IT IS well for the gardener to start with an open mind. He should look for suggestions from the site, not omitting to take into account its immediate environment. The best gardens are personal: they take their character from their makers.
I am sometimes asked "What style of garden would you suggest for my plot?" and I am tempted to reply, "The commonsense style." The exact treatment for a given plot is not to be laid down by rule. The gardener may not recognize the possibilities of the site at first glance, but he will do so when he has carefully studied it. In Chapter IV I showed the utility of straight lines in an oblong plot of limited size. I do not wish to magnify the difficulties of planning, and I may say at the outset that the more knotty problems arise most often in connection with plots of irregular shapes or contours, or plots unfavorably conditioned as regards aspect and surroundings. The treatment of a small rectangular garden plot may be a very simple matter, provided due weight is given to aspect. Yet even the smallest plot involves alternative modes of planning, and then the gardener must give his casting vote for that one which, after satisfying the requirements of horticulture and the conditions which make for artistic quality, best accords with his personal views.
The first point to consider is the apportionment of the various sections of the garden:
How much space do I require for vegetable ground?
Do I want a tennis or croquet lawn?
Have I to provide a playground for children?
Must I limit my flower space to what I can properly manage in my spare time?
These — and possibly other — questions will occur to the planner, and he should answer them definitely before he starts to plan. In doing so he will naturally commence to evolve some kind of skeleton idea of what he would like his garden to be. His next step should be to lay down on paper a plan of his garden site to scale, say one eighth of an inch to a foot, and mark on it the house, indicating the position of the doors back and front, or at the sides, as the case may be. He should then add an arrow to show the north point, to remind him, in the course of his work, of the direction in which the maximum amount of sunlight will fall. The gate by which the premises are entered from the roadway must be marked in its proper position. This much accomplished, the gardener will have before him in bird's-eye view the main factors that should control his planning.
