With all the facts on paper; you are half-way to a landscape plan. From this point, the rest is not difficult if you will keep in mind that you are planning a livable garden. Don't get yourself in a dither by all you read and hear about the difficulty of creating focal points, axial lines, formal, informal and naturalistic gardens. You're not planning a garden on theory. You're planning it to live in. Planned for this, you'll find to your surprise that all these other things fall into place anyway.

The basis for the plan is the family requirements. What are these requirements? Well, there is the lawn area. This is needed for the picture setting. But the lawn is also a medium for cooling off the place in summer evenings. Strange how little thought is given to this. You may want to grow vegetables and fruit. A flower garden is always wanted, or a decorative garden fountain to make your lawn picturesque. You may wish a terrace and, if you entertain much, an outdoor grill.

You may want to enclose the lawn on the street side and if your house fronts on two streets, you'll need something to keep the public from cutting across the lawn at the corner. There may be other family needs—a game area, clothes drying site, a sandbox for young children. List them all.

Naturally the size of the place and whether it is open, shaded, hilly or restricted in some other way, will influence how much you can do and what space each feature can have, or if all can be used. Vegetables and fruits are impossible under trees. A hilly spot exposed to the full sun may be too dry for anything but the toughest of trees and shrubs. A windswept hill may need a windbreak of trees. Seaside gardens are planted on the basis of their closeness to the sea.

Concentrate on arranging your space to accommodate the requirements or features you intend to include in the plan. Begin by carving out the lawn area. This will, of course, be limited by the size of the property and the location of the house on the property. Most of the lawn might be on one side of the house or at the front instead of the rear. Your size will be adjusted accordingly. The shape you give the lawn will considerably influence the rest of the plan, as well as the efficient use of the whole area.

The plants you set around the base of the house are given the loose term "foundation planting." It is a purely American invention, unknown in Europe or anywhere else. It has had many critics, but despite these it persists. It is America's contribution to home landscaping. In its correct application, foundation planting should enhance the home, bringing out the best parts of the house and playing down the weaknesses. However, as an art it has been and is being badly abused.

Properly related to the particular house, a foundation planting can add charm and color. On the other hand, there is nothing more pathetic than a few diminutive pointed evergreens strung along the base of the house. It's wrong and it's ugly. Many builders do this and then call the home landscaped. Then there are houses against which plants are so crowded that they kill each other.

But the biggest mistake you can make is to follow the trend and plant conifers like pine, spruce, hemlock, white cedar and similar trees. These are really 60 ft. trees. In a few years they will completely hide the house. Avoid, too, the planting composed of one of every plant from the nursery. This is a plant collection, each plant different from the one next to it. Not only is this expensive; but, most of all, the plants have no relation to the house at all. There is no unifo rmity either in color or form.