your
neighbor. It will allow you to leave the greater share of the small lawn
intact, thus securing the impression of breadth that is so necessary to
the best effect.

[Illustration: A BIT OF INFORMAL BORDER]

I have spoken of planting shrubs at the sides of the home-lot. If this
is done, we secure a sort of frame for the home-picture that will be
extremely pleasing. If the shrubs near the street are small and low, and
those beyond them increase in breadth and height as they approach the
rear of the lot, with evergreens or trees as a background for the
dwelling, the effect will be delightful. Such a general plan of planting
the home-grounds is easily carried out. The most important feature of it
to keep in mind is that of locating your plants in positions that will
give each one a chance to display its charms to the best effect, and
this you can easily do if you read the catalogues and familiarize
yourself with the heights and habits of them.

If your lot adjoins that of a neighbor who has not yet improved his
home-grounds, I would advise consulting with him, and forming a
partnership in improvement-work, if possible. If you proceed after a
plan of your own on your side of the fence, and he does the same on his
side, there may be a sad lack of harmony in the result. But _if_ you
talk the matter over together the chances are that you can formulate a
plan that will be entirely satisfactory to both parties, and result in
that harmony which is absolutely necessary to effective work. Because,
you see, both will be working together toward a definite design, while
without such a partnership of interests each would be working
independently, and your ideas of the fitness of things might be sadly at
variance with those of your neighbor.

Never set your plants in rows. Nature never does that, and she doesn't
make any mistakes. If you want an object-lesson in arrangement, go into
the fields and pastures, and along the road, and note how she has
arranged the shrubs she has planted there. Here a group, there a group,
in a manner that seems to have had no plan back of it, and yet I feel
quite sure she planned out very carefully every one of these clumps and
combinations. The closer you study Nature's methods and pattern after
them the nearer you will come to success.

Avoid formality as you would the plague if you want your garden to
afford you all the pleasure you can get out of it. Nature's methods are
always restful in effec