By taking into account your hobbies, your family life, your climate with its prevailing winds and other pertinent features, and the situation of neighboring houses, you can place your shelter where it will do the most good and add to your use of your garden, even improve your plants' chances for survival. For instance, if you live in areas where strong sun makes it difficult to grow camellias or other broad-leaved evergreens, you can give them the needed protection by placing your lath-roofed shelter so that its shadow is cast over adjoining beds. This will enable you to plant your favorites alongside your outdoor entertaining room, making a real conversation piece of this exhibit of your hobby plants.

By using a slat-roofed shelter, too, you will achieve privacy from above, where neighbors have second-floor windows overlooking your terrace or where a street or path overlooks it from a hill. (See the sketch which shows how to achieve privacy.) A solid roof offers complete protection, of course, but it is surprising how much protection a slatted sun-breaker will give, how it can hide the view, especially when reinforced with vines in summer. It will not cut off all the light from the rooms of the house, should the terrace be placed alongside it; and, if you want the warmth of the sun and more light in the house in the winter, the slats can be placed on a frame which is removed each winter for storage and replaced before the sun gets too hot, or as soon as you begin to use the terrace in the spring. They may be alternated in direction if you wish. (See photographic section for suggestions on slatting.)