The design of a garden should take its general character from the local conditions and environment. In the first instance, it must be adapted to the special requirements of the gardener. If he is his own designer, he will, of course, always have these requirements in mind; if another makes the design, the gardener cannot be too clear in specifying his exact requirements.

The natural conditions of the ground must be well studied. The contours, slope, and aspect of the plot are the first factors to be considered, and these will offer the first suggestions for its treatment. The shape of its boundaries will be important, and equally so the position and shape of the house.

The aim of the designer should be to bring all these factors into a consistent and pleasing combination, in which the garden and house are in entire harmony with each other. Here it will be well to warn the designer new to the work against planning for mere effect on paper.

The lines of the plan, representing as they do the projection of the design on the horizontal plane only, have little meaning if they are not intimately correlated with some effect in the third dimension.

A garden at all stages of its development should be a thing of height as well as of length and breadth. It is only by studying the effect in the vertical plane that a successful and artistic result is realizable. The plan is a skeleton affair, merely defining the spaces to be devoted to borders, beds, grass, and gravel.

The designing of a garden is a process akin to the artist's conception and execution of a picture. It is governed by principles identical with those understood by the painter as "composition," which may be defined as a general balance of effect obtained without the use of a too marked symmetry in the principal features of the design.

To ensure practical realization of this effect, therefore, the designer must ever bear in mind the plants-flowers, trees, statuary, and shrubs-with which his outlines will be filled in.

It may be noted also that he has it within his option to supplement these natural factors by others of an artificial kind, such as summer houses, arches, pergolas, and other minor structures which have a well-recognized place in the garden.

It is strongly urged to recognized the importance of eliminating symmetry from the general garden picture; not only because it precludes a picturesque effect, but for the practical reason that it is rarely consistent with a design which gives due weight to the all-important factor, aspect.

Many complaints of undue formality have their basis in the existence of a meaningless symmetry. In observing these injunctions against symmetry it must not be understood that they apply with the same force to details.

On the contrary, the treatment of certain parts of the garden may be governed with advantage by considerations of symmetry. For instance, in introducing a group of beds for effect on the lawn, a one-sided arrangement would be opposed to good practice, particularly if associated with a grass plot of regular shape.