If you have a small plot and you really love your flowers, you may not want to add a small vegetable garden. In town and suburban gardens this may be well advised, because the atmospheric conditions may not allow for the growth of culinary plants in the state of cleanliness needed to be used for food. Leaving this consideration out of the question, it is doubtful whether the results are commensurate with the trouble involved, when you can buy good vegetables cheaply.

However, if you want to plant vegetables, it is a great choice for a garden, and patio statuary goes along very nicely. It is as interesting to some people to grow a cabbage as a chrysanthemum. There are gardens and gardens, and, given a pure atmosphere and sufficient space, the vegetable garden may find its legitimate place and usefulness.

The principal flower borders should be planted near the north boundary, wherever that may come, and you should run the principal path alongside or between them. Generally this path starts from the house and terminates somewhere at the remote end of the garden.

If the vegetable ground is to occupy its usual place at the end of the plot, the main path may continue into and through it. On the other hand, it may be more convenient to approach the vegetable plot by an offshoot from the main path.

In either case, you should continue the flower borders on both sides of the path through the vegetable plot. The result is to extend the principal garden vista in length, thus increasing the sense of space, and, at the same time, to screen, more or less, the part devoted to vegetables.

It is true that these borders absorb a certain amount of space, but that must be allowed for in fixing the dimensions of the vegetable plot. To complete the scheme it only remains to add a transverse hedge or other barrier at the near end of the vegetable plot and the thing is done. These supplementary borders, if preferred, may be reserved for flowers intended for cutting, and some part for raising seedlings, striking cuttings, and other utilitarian purposes.

A charming suburban garden could be arranged in this way, in which the kitchen plot with its borders of bold perennials, backed by espaliers, and edged with herbs, is not the least interesting part of the garden. There are many other touches you can give to your vegetable ground to bring it into harmony with the garden as a whole:

A bower-like structure can be made to support a colony of scarlet runners, whose coral flowers will give a piquant note of color to an uninteresting corner, and at the same time provide you with succulent food.

The bold, handsome foliage of the rhubarb and the rambling growth of the vegetable marrow are good to look upon, and even if they didn't contribute to the dinner table, they would be grown for their beauty alone. And what is more graceful than the fairy foliage of the asparagus?

Bearing these points in mind, you can capitalize on the picturesque features of the kitchen garden tenants if you are careful to dispose them to advantage. However, any steps taken in that direction are likely to be in opposition to the common sense principles of vegetable culture.

In selecting the site for the kitchen garden the question of aspect must not be overlooked, particularly as it affects that part of the adjacent flower garden. You may have to deal with the shadow cast by the hedge, which is why the vegetable garden should be on the north side of the garden with an east or west aspect as long as all other conditions are favorable. With a north or south aspect, the point would not arise.

In gardens of irregular shape it is sometimes possible to cut off a triangular or awkwardly shaped piece for the vegetable plot, thereby giving better form to the rest. In the actual making of the ground you must follow trenching and fertilizing directions as well, just as you would for creating a flower garden.

If the garden is of any considerable size, a tool shed, which might be used also as a potting-shed, as a great convenience. It may be a very simple structure; but you should not disfigure it with corrugated iron or other unsightly material. A thatched roof of straw or reeds would convert it into an almost picturesque feature, and there is no reason why it should not support a graceful flowering climber.