ON GARDEN MAKING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3823, 21 June 1927, Page 11

ON GARDEN MAKING.

By

J. Fleming, F.R.H.S.

The planning and planting of a garden constitute a pastime that appeals very much to most of us. The love of plants and of the soil is natural, and true plantlovers like digging and planting. Gardens may be formal or informal, stately or picturesque, as seems most fitting, but, whatever the style, out* should feel in any garden that its own particular character has been developed in the most effective way. Whether large o r small any grounds should contain, in balanced arrangement, as many of the different features of gardens as the nature of the site makes reasonable. Of the different gardens that one may have, several may be classed as indispensable. Every one will wish to possess a rose garden, and almost everyone will want herbaceous borders, while a collection of flowering trees and shrubs may, in spring and early summer, furnish some of the most beautiful scenes it is possible to have. Rock gardens are always interesting, and when well placed and well made may be very beautiful. Their site, however, needs careful choosing, for, of all gardens, a rock garden must fit happily into its surroundings: otherwise it is better, far, to do without it. This may apply to a greater or less, extent to all types of garden, but a formal garden is obviously designed and made, whereas the appearance of a rock garden should arouse the feeling that it has grown there naturally and that no other sort of garden should be in that place. It has sometimes occurred to me that many people miss' a lot of the pleasure of garden making. They like plants of all kinds, but they like them as separate

plants, and often entirely miss the added delight of putting them in their right place in the garden. In working or playing with them, they should, in fact, be used, as an artist uses the paint on his canvas. Every bit of form and every touch of colour should fie subservient to, and help to make, the finished picture. This is the way to use plants, unless one is, or wishes to be, a collector, and likes to see them in straight rows, each plant with its natural beauty carefully staked away. I think that even collections should be in groups and each group as big as the space allows. Some people possess a Happy instinct for the design and arrangement of gardens. The quality most essential to success in such work, the evidence of which I have found most often missing in gardens I have visited, is the sense of proportion. For the plant lover, the choosing of trees, shrubs, and plants is an engrossing task. Certain plants belong to certain parts of the garden, and one feels that they could only be used in particular places and for certain kinds of planting. Shrubs, especially those of beautiful habit of growth, seldom, if ever, look well in straight borders, and, generally, the more informal the method of planting the greater number of shrubs the better. As with most other plants, thev should be planted in masses. To see this it is only necessary to compare the effect of a glowing mass of our native rata, a stretch of the golden kowhai, or seas of rhododendrons, with that produced by single specimens of these same plants dotted in a mixed shrubbery. In fact, the difference between single plants and masses of the same thing is often so wonderful that it is difficult to believe they are the same plants. Do not plant uninteresting trees, shrubs, or plants. There are so many that are really beautiful that the largest garden could scarcely contain them all, at any rate in sufficient numbers to make the most effective planting. It is a sense partly the result of training and constantly observing plants that toll us how and where to use certain plants and what kinds are best for certain positions. In some way one must always contrive a culminating point, which must be approached with increasing interest. From it one must go to unexpected but lesser features, being surprised and pleased to the limits. Gardens entirely formal in design, beautiful as they often may be in themselves, appear to me to leave an unsatisfied feeling, as if they were in some way or other incomplete. Adequate seclusion in a garden is a place apart from the world, where human beings can rest and take their ease in quiet surroundings. Privacy appeals to me, as one of the greatest charms a garden can afford. Tho arrangement of some simple and tasteful colour grouping of a flower border may be planned so that it shall give pleasing colour groupings for as long a period for which there shall be as much flower as possible. By this, I mean the arranging, in distinct groups throughout the border, of such colours as cannot fail to make a pleasing combination. By an intimate knowledge and a liberal choice of plants, a great deal may be done in this way, so as to form pictures of living beauty. What else is there that is so fascinating and delightful of the free gardening art as striving for effect in colourblending, with common flowers, in harmonious groupings? There are too many interesting and beautiful shrubs and herbaceous plants to enumerate them in the space of a short article. Be sure, how--ever, to include some conifer and other evergreens in any planting of shrubs. They add weight, and in winter will intensify the beautiful tracery of the branches of the deciduous trees and shrubs by the contrast with their own evergreen foliage.