When planning your garden, you should draw the plan to scale, accompanied by a scale of feet to make sure that you have enough room for the plants and any kind of wall water fountain you may want, while still boasting clean lines. These details are needed to indicate the general scheme of the garden. You should follow your plan closely, while allowing for personal taste if you use examples that you obtain from someone else or from a book.

There are many different arrangements to choose from, all equally good as long as you follow the general principles of planning and keep the cost in mind. There is no one concrete form to garden design. Some plans are better for larger areas, while others are better suited to small garden designs.

Some of the things you can keep in mind when planning a garden are:

• Grass is confined to compact areas, with means of access to them at more than one point.
 
• Trees are placed so as not to cast shadows on the borders.
 
• Principal borders are in full sun.
 
• The summerhouse entrance is in shade or partial shade.
 
• Symmetry in the main features of the plan can be ignored.
 
• Path space is reduced to a minimum, so far as is consistent with achieving a picturesque effect.
 
• When grass space is divided, the two areas are not of equal size.
 
• The vista from the summer house is made as interesting as possible.
 
• No curves or angles other than right angles are introduced into the garden lines, except only where they may serve some useful purpose.

The following conventional indications apply to all garden plans:

• Beds and borders: Full black
• Grass: Shaded
• House: Hatched
• Paths, drives, and vegetable spaces: Unshaded

The practical aspect of planting is for the working gardener. It consists of placing the plants in the soil in such a way that they at once find conditions suitable for growth, both as regards nourishment and external environment.

This implies knowledge of the requirements of each kind of plant. It is not good enough to dig a hole and stick the roots in. The hole should be of the right depth and of ample size to accommodate the roots when spread out over its bottom, and the soil thrown in should be carefully compacted around the roots by pressure. These details, however, do not enter into the question of garden design.

Nevertheless, the gardener has a very real concern in the planting operations, because it is in the placing of the plants that the garden picture may achieve its highest development, or be utterly ruined.

When planting a bed or border it is necessary to consider the flowers in respect to:

• Color
• Habit
• Period of Bloom
• Succession

The most striking characteristic of the flower is undoubtedly its, color and the success of any piece of planting will depend largely on the skill and good taste with which the colors are managed.

In the days when the old-fashioned flowers were deposed to make room for that unfortunate quartet, scarlet geranium, scarlet sage, canna, and coleus, the canons of good taste were lost amidst the new-born enthusiasm for vivid contrast in primary colors.

The vogue for these flowers has now somewhat declined, but the trail of it still lingers in many gardens, and gardeners continue to plant as if the acme of good effect depended upon the accomplishment of a series of garish contrasts in the most brilliant gamut of color at command.

It is a question whether you should ever try to include vividly contrasting colors, for if the mass of each color is not large, they will cancel each other at anything but short range. The finest color effects are found with harmony, which offers a much wider opportunity for broad, rich, and conspicuous display, both for close inspection and for distant effect.