Garden for ten-year
results and get them for next to nothing, and at the same time you may
quicken speed whenever your exchequer smiles broadly enough. Of course
this argument is chiefly for those who have the time and not the money;
for by time we mean play time, time which is money lost if you don't
play. The garden that gives the most joy, "Joyous Gard," as Sir
Launcelot named his, is not to be bought, like a Circassian slave; it
must be brought up, like a daughter. How much of life they can miss who
can buy whatever they want whenever they want it!
But I tell first of my own garden also because I believe it summarizes
to the eye a number of primary book-rules, authoritative "don'ts," by
the observance of which a multitude of amateur gardeners may get better
results than it yet shows. Nevertheless, I will hardly do more than
note a few exceptions to these ground rules, which may give the rules a
more convincing force. First of all, "don't" let any of your planting
cut or split your place in two. How many a small house-lot lawn we see
split down the middle by a row of ornamental shrubs or fruit-trees which
might as easily have been set within a few feet of the property line,
whose rigidity, moreover, would have best excused the rigidity of the
planted line. But such glaring instances aside, there are many subtler
ones quite as unfortunate; "don't" be too sure you are not unwittingly
furnishing one.
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