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Planning Your Garden
If he has decided to grow vegetables, he may at once rule off on the paper as much space as he wishes to devote to that purpose. Usually this will be situated at that part of the garden remote from the house, and there are excellent practical reasons for it occupying that position. The division should be at right angles to the garden's length in a garden with parallel sides, even though the end fence or wall is oblique. Irregularity in the shape of the vegetable plot is immaterial, and the right-angled division squares things for the flower garden.
Leaving the vegetable ground for the present, the next thing is to locate the principal border, and if the aspect is east or west, there should be no hesitation in giving it a place against the north fence, where it will receive full sun. The planner may therefore rule a line parallel with this fence six feet distant from it, adding a second parallel line at, say, three feet beyond to define the principal path. If space permits, a third line may be added, at four feet beyond the second, to mark off a second border, the near side of which will be the grass. Reference to the illustration (Fig. 29) will make these operations clear. The path is now represented by a narrow ribbon with no terminal at either end. We may now consider the approach to and destination of the path. The near end must be coordinated with the house door, as explained in an earlier chapter, and this could be done by marking off a stretch of gravel immediately behind the house, from which the path may start its journey. Such a device is convenient when the aspect is that assumed in the example, but with a north aspect the space about the rear of the house would be too valuable to waste as gravel, and another device would have to be employed. I need not describe every possible mode of doing this, as many examples will be illustrated in the plans which follow. As for the path's objective, I have already offered suggestions in an earlier chapter.
Though it is a good rule to make paths go direct to their destinations, an exception is permissible and even desirable in a long garden, where a single straight path would prove a monotonous feature. I therefore favor some device which breaks the line, such as may be contrived by cranking the path or by introducing an expansion into its length.
