Garden Structures 151 



just a plain summer house, or even a pergola or an arbor, though 

 these latter two apply only to roofless structures — a garden 

 house provides that definite livableness to the garden, which is 

 needed to encourage hving in it. Assuring protection from the 

 elements, it invites repose; yet, being open and vine-draped and 

 sylvan, it loses nothing of outdoor redolence in doing so. It 

 remains still a temple of Pan. 



If such a retreat is never to be used however, it ought never to 

 be built. For of all the dismal things anywhere in the world, 

 the deserted, dejected, down-at-the-heels garden house is surely 

 the most dismal! It wears the look and the air that a pass6 

 beauty might wear, in the gray dawn, the morning after a ball. 

 One shivers at the stamp of desolation so emphasized by con- 

 trast with what once was. 



A garden house is a reasonable project whenever it is able, and 

 only when it is able, to fulfil the purpose for which it is built. 

 This purpose is to provide an outdoor sitting-room stifficiently 

 secluded to invite occupation and to insure its intimate enjoy- 

 ment ; a room apart from, and far enough distant from, the dwell- 

 ing to afford a complete change and relaxation. 



Obviously the circtmistances of every garden are the factors 

 which will determine independently the opportunity for a sum- 

 mer house in that particular garden. Most places afford a 

 situation that fits, or may be made to fit, the requirements, 

 but there are many of course that do not. Where the limita- 

 tions do exclude such a structure, give it up absolutely. It is 

 worse than useless when it is crowded in ; it is absurd. 



This is a simple matter, however — this deciding whether or 

 no it is a reasonable, and therefore a permissible, member 

 within the limits of a certain garden. But the choice of the sort 

 of a structure to build does not seem to be so simple, if the 



