Although Frank Waugh was known as a naturalistic designer, his book "Formal Design in Landscape Architecture" exemplifies his thorough knowledge and understanding of the formal style of garden design. He believed that there are settings which require the strict guidelines of formal garden design and that certain sites call for loose, naturalistic design concepts. Formal design, in the eyes of Waugh, requires all the parts of the garden to be symmetrically balanced. This is not to say that informal gardening is not balanced, but it lacks the formality of bilateral symmetry and radial symmetry that the formal garden design strictly abides by.