The same test for unity may be applied to smaller garden pictures in their frames. Can this or that plant be removed without damaging the picture? If so, the group has not been tightly enough composed.

How to achieve unity is, however, more important than how to detect its absence. In the garden pattern all parts of the de sign, path, bed, or border, must be interrelated. The whole must hang together. Anything extraneous detracts from the quiet satisfaction of a unified scheme.

In planting likewise, every group must play its part and be related to the whole. The small garden can successfully pre sent only a single idea, a single picture. Avoid saying too much. Larger gardens of more scope can accommodate sev eral pictures but they must not compete. They too should be part of a greater whole, complete in themselves but integral with their surroundings.

Many gardeners, especially plant enthusiasts, put too much emphasis on small, intimate groupings, as a few hemerocallis with a clump of phlox, a delphinium with a lily or two, a sin gle pansy with a group of scillas. Such precious groupings have a place in the composition only when they play a part in the larger scheme. They have little value as individual bits. In fact they are generally lost unless repeated in a sequence. If you are tempted to indulge in this sort of thing, apply the unity test frequently to your garden. When you find that a certain group does not strengthen the picture, either discard it, or amplify it so that it does count in the general scheme.

Unity by Selection

Those who so love plants that they incline to strive for too many in too little space, should try to be aware of unity at the very beginning of their garden planning. An overcrowded, heterogeneous collection of plants, no matter how beautiful as individuals, will not produce a unified scheme. No less an authority on garden design than Gertrude Jekyll has said, "I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be in themselves, and however ample their number, does not make a garden. It is only a collection."

With such a host of fine plants available the beginner's "must" list is often tremendous. No one garden, unless it is acres in extent, could hold them all artistically. The task of reducing such a list is a hard one that must be undertaken before any plants are ordered. There are several methods of elimination.