242 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



The House 

 as Part of 

 the Garden 

 Boundary 



Garden 



"Floor" 



Materials 



Where one facade of the house forms also a wall of the garden or a 

 major part of it,* this facade of the house must be considered in its 

 relations to the garden design. In a formal scheme it is normally sym- 

 metrically related to the whole garden and the main axis of the garden 

 is terminated by a feature in the facade of the house. (See Drawing 

 III, opp. p. 36, and compare Plate i.) It is much better, where it 

 can be done with due regard to the architectural planning of the house, 

 to have this feature a door, a French window, or a group of windows 

 recognizing a room in the house which commands the garden. A 

 chimney or any solid space between two windows, if it be on the axis 

 of the garden, is very likely to give an unpleasant effect of blindness 

 and of splitting the composition of the house facade into two parts. 

 Where the facade design of the house is necessarily unrelated to the 

 axis of the garden, although the house mass is approximately sym- 

 metrical upon this axis, it may be possible to set the garden at a lower 

 level and to interpose between it and the house a terrace with a flight 

 of steps properly designed to relate axially to the garden below, but to 

 lead easily to the exits from the house above. Where a house dominates 

 a garden, it affects the scale of the whole garden design, and any other 

 structures which face upon the garden must be studied in their mass 

 relation to the house. If a garden shelter so situated, when made of a 

 size appropriate to its use, appears too small in relation to the house, 

 it may still be possible to treat the shelter as a decorated and roofed 

 portion of the surrounding wall, and so by sacrificing its importance as 

 an independent building prevent its competition with the larger house. 



Whether these boundary structures are to be walls or lattices or 

 fences or hedges will depend on the choice of expression and the choice 

 of expenditure which the designer makes for his whole scheme. A 

 design may be expressed in any of these terms with no less of excellence 

 so long as the expression is in each case consistent. 



As we have seen, if the garden is to appear as a single area inclosed, 

 it must be sufficiently open within so that its farther boundary may be 

 to some extent visible. The floor of the garden then will serve two 

 purposes in the design ; it is a foreground over which is seen the com- 

 position made by the farther boundary and whatever free-standing 



* Cf. p. 259 under the Estate. 



