“A building often needs the help of vines or flowers or both to tie it to the grounds in such a way as to form a harmonious whole.  Vines lend themselves well to this work.  It is better to plant a perennial vine, and so let it form a permanent part of your landscape scheme.  The Virginia creeper, wistaria, honeysuckle, a climbing rose, the clematis and trumpet vine are all most satisfactory.

“Just close your eyes and picture a house of natural colour, that mellow gray of the weathered shingles.  Now add to this old house a purple wistaria.  Can you see the beauty of it?  I shall not forget soon a rather ugly corner of my childhood home, where the dining room and kitchen met.  Just there climbing over, and falling over a trellis was a trumpet vine.  It made beautiful an awkward angle, an ugly bit of carpenter work.

“Of course, the morning-glory is an annual vine, as is the moon-vine and wild cucumber.  Now, these have their special function.  For often, especially in school work, it is necessary to cover an ugly thing for just a time, until the better things and better times come.  The annual is ‘the chap’ for this work.

“Along an old fence a hop vine is a thing of beauty.  One might try to rival the woods’ landscape work.  For often one sees festooned from one rotted tree to another the ampelopsis vine.

“Flowers may well go along the side of the building, or bordering a walk.  In general, though, keep the front lawn space open and unbroken by beds.  What lovelier in early spring than a bed of daffodils close to the house?  Hyacinths and tulips, too, form a blaze of glory.  These are little or no bother, and start the spring aright.  One may make of some bulbs an exception to the rule of unbroken front lawn.  Snowdrops and crocuses planted through the lawn are beautiful.  They do not disturb the general effect, but just blend with the whole.  One expert bulb gardener says to take a basketful of bulbs in the fall, walk about your grounds, and just drop bulbs out here and there.  Wherever the bulbs drop, plant them.  Such small bulbs as those we plant in lawns should be in groups of four to six.  Daffodils may be thus planted, too.  You all remember the grape hyacinths that grow all through Katharine’s side yard.

“The place for a flower garden is generally at the side or rear of the house.  The backyard garden is a lovely idea, is it not?  Who wishes to leave a beautiful looking front yard, turn the corner of a house, and find a dump heap?  Not I. The flower garden may be laid out formally in neat little beds, or it may be more of a careless, hit-or-miss sort.  Both have their good points.  Great masses of bloom are attractive.

“You should have in mind some notion of the blending of colour.  Nature appears not to consider this at all, and still gets wondrous effects.  This is because of the tremendous amount of her perfect background of green, and the limitlessness of her space, while we are confined at the best to relatively small areas.  So we should endeavour not to blind people’s eyes with clashes of colours which do not at close range blend well.  In order to break up extremes of colours you can always use masses of white flowers, or something like mignonette, which is in effect green.