face the four quarters of heaven, and,
considering well, set your windbreaks of sweeping hemlocks, pines,
spruces, not in fortress-like walls barring all the horizon, but in
alternate groups that flank, without appearing to do so heavily, the
north and northwest. Even a barberry hedge on two sides of a garden,
wedge point to north, like the wild-goose squadrons of springtime, will
make that spot an oasis in the winter valley of death.

A wise gardener it is who thinks of the winter in springtime and plants
for it as surely as he thinks of spring in the winter season and longs
for it! If, in the many ways by which the affairs of daily life are
re-enforced, the saying is true that "forethought is coin in the pocket,
quiet in the brain, and content in the heart," doubly does it apply to
the pleasures of living, of which the outdoor life of working side by
side with nature, called gardening, is one of the chief. When a garden
is inherited, the traditions of the soil or reverence for those who
planned and toiled in it may make one blind to certain defects in its
conception, and beginning with _a priori_ set by another one does as one
can.

But in those choosing site, and breaking soil for themselves,
inconsistency is inexcusable. Follow the lay of the land and let it
lead. Nature does not attempt placid lowland pictures on a steep
hillside, nor dramatic landscape effects in a horizonless meadow,
therefore why should you? For one great garden principle you will learn
from nature's close companionship--consistency!

You who have a bit of abrupt hillside of impoverished soil, yet where
the sky-line is divided in a picture of many panels by the trees, you
should not try to perch thereon a prim Dutch garden of formal lines;
neither should you, to whom a portion of fertile level plain has fallen,
seek to make it picturesque by a tortuous maze of walks, curving about
nothing in particular and leading nowhere, for of such is not nature.
Either situation will develop the skill, though in different directions,
and do not forget that in spite of better soil it takes greater
individuality to make a truly good and harmonious garden on the flat
than on the rolling ground.

I always tremble for the lowlander who, down in the depth of his nature,
has a prenatal hankering for rocks, because he is apt to build an
undigested rockery! These sort of rockeries are wholly separate from the
rock gardens, often majestic, that nowadays supplement