The crime I once committed through youthful ignorance cured me for all time of an impetuous approach to garden landscape. Once I had decided on gardening as a career, my father suggested that I should be responsible for the -garden, over an acre in extent, which lay in the shelter of a fold in the Yorkshire Dales just below the moors.

The demands on the limited amount of land available for housing developments continue to increase and inevitably gardens will become smaller, at least those the majority of amateur gardeners can afford. To achieve a balanced design which, with the passage of time, will blend into a composite whole requires a sympathetic understanding of both soil and plants. Once this knowledge has been attained it will give immense satisfaction.

Without doubt, for anyone with limited time, shrubs are the most practical method of achieving a creditable garden with minimum effort. This does not mean that once planted up nothing more is required front the person responsible except the purchase of a deckchair and sunshade. A conifer with all the lower branches killed by weeds allowed to grow unchecked around it is not to be compared with a specimen furnished to soil level with healthy foliage. Initially the garden will have a very lean unfinished look, but only for one or two seasons and these formative years are of vital importance if the shrubs are to attain in maturity their full potential.

Spend the first twelve months trying to find out precisely what the plot contains for there may be valuable shrubs hidden behind the anonymity of leafless branches. Unfortunately, most garden owners conclude the previous occupiers to be horticultural morons and set about erasing every sign of their presence with a vigorous enthusiasm. Assume instead that the original design was in the nature of a masterpiece, then embellish or delete so that the main features become an expression of your own artistic sense.

A plant only achieves its full potential when planted under the conditions which suit it best and this all-important factor must be taken into consideration when choosing and buying plants for the garden. A comprehensive list of the shrubs and small trees which have adapted themselves to suit every set of conditions which are likely to be encountered by the garden.

However, I do emphasise that only after careful consideration should any major onslaught be made for seventy years of growth can be destroyed in an hour.