[Illustration: 

DRAWING I DRAWING II

DRAWING III DRAWING IV

This very simple plan of a garden, used by The Chief, has in it the essentials for all your garden plan drawing.  Follow each step as the boys did and you will be able to make a drawing of your own garden.]

“I will lend you mine and you might make a drawing of that,” craftily suggested Albert.

“No, young man, you are to make your own.  Let us suppose for the sake of an easy problem that we claim our garden is to be on a square piece of land, forty feet by forty feet.  In drawing to a scale, one takes a certain small measure to stand for a foot.  If we take an inch to be a foot, then the entire forty-foot length would have to be forty inches.  That is a pretty good large drawing.  Let us take something smaller and say one-eighth of an inch equals a foot, thus 1/8 in. = 1 ft.  So we shall have a length and a width of five inches.

“The first step in the actual drawing is to find the centre of your given piece of drawing paper.  See, I just make short lines or portions of diagonals through the centre as shown right here in what I call Drawing I. Draw a vertical line through the centre extending to the top and the bottom of the paper.  Now draw a horizontal line through the centre to the extreme left and right of the sheet.  Now measure up from the centre on the vertical line the half width of the garden.  If the centre is to stand for the centre of the garden, then the garden itself would extend up, down, and to the right and left of its centre, just 20 ft. or 2-1/2 in. in a plan with scale 1/8 in. to 1 ft.  So measure up from the centre along the vertical line just two and one-half inches and place a dot.  Letter this dot A. Do this same thing down the vertical line and we have dot B. Also measure the same distance along the horizontal to left, calling the dot D and along the right calling the last dot C. Now draw a horizontal line 5 in. long through A with 2-1/2 in. either side of the dot.  This gives you one side of your garden or a 40-ft. length.  Do a similar thing through dot B. Through C and D draw similar lines.  We now have the outline of our garden of 40 ft. square.  We have on our paper, though, a square 5 x 5 in.

“I have decided to have a circular bed in the centre of the garden which shall be 10 ft. in diameter.  Therefore, the radius of the circle should be 5 ft. or 5/8 in.  Get a pair of compasses for that, Jack.  Now I shall swing the circle.  But I wish a 2-ft. path all about this circular garden.  If the path is 2 ft., then I must set my compasses on 2/8 in. more or now make the 5/8 in. into 7/8 in.  Let us swing another circle with the same point as a centre.

“It strikes me that if I should lay my garden out into four squares, the combination of squares, central circles and straight main paths would look incongruous.  So I shall cut the central points of the four square beds off by swinging circles.  Have patience and you will see, for the general plan is in my mind just as it ought to be in the mind of any person who is to make a garden.  Now swing another circle with a radius of 1 in., and still another the radius of which shall be 1-1/8 in.