nothing, and at the same time you may
quicken speed whenever your exchequer smiles broadly enough. Of course
this argument is chiefly for those who have the time and not the money;
for by time we mean play time, time which is money lost if you don't
play. The garden that gives the most joy, "Joyous Gard," as Sir
Launcelot named his, is not to be bought, like a Circassian slave; it
must be brought up, like a daughter. How much of life they can miss who
can buy whatever they want whenever they want it!

But I tell first of my own garden also because I believe it summarizes
to the eye a number of primary book-rules, authoritative "don'ts," by
the observance of which a multitude of amateur gardeners may get better
results than it yet shows. Nevertheless, I will hardly do more than
note a few exceptions to these ground rules, which may give the rules a
more convincing force. First of all, "don't" let any of your planting
cut or split your place in two. How many a small house-lot lawn we see
split down the middle by a row of ornamental shrubs or fruit-trees which
might as easily have been set within a few feet of the property line,
whose rigidity, moreover, would have best excused the rigidity of the
planted line. But such glaring instances aside, there are many subtler
ones quite as unfortunate; "don't" be too sure you are not unwittingly
furnishing one.

"Don't" destroy the openness of your sward by dotting it with shrubs or
pattern flower-beds. To this rule I doubt if a plausible exception could
be contrived. It is so sweeping and so primary that we might well
withhold it here were we not seeking to state its artistic reason why.
Which is, that such plantings are mere eruptions of individual
smartness, without dignity and with no part in any general unity;
chirping up like pert children in a company presumably trying to be
rational.

On the other hand, I hope my acre, despite all its unconscious or
unconfessed mistakes, shows pleasantly that the best openness of a lawn
is not to be got between unclothed, right-angled and parallel bounds.
The more its verdure-clad borders swing in and out the longer they look,
not merely because they are longer but also because they interest and
lure the eye. "Where are you going?" says the eye.

"Come and see," says the roaming line.

"Don't" plant in stiff lines except in close relation to architectural
or legal bounds. A straight horizontal line Nature scarcely knows save
in her r