340 The American Flower Garden 



In this busy country gardening is regarded as of interest 

 chiefly to women of leisure, and to them, for the most part, it is left; 

 whereas in England especially, but on the Continent, too, one 

 rarely meets an educated man, and almost never a gentlewoman, 

 not intelligently, usually actively interested in gardens, and as 

 ready to discuss them at the dinner-table as to talk about the 

 latest play or novel. The Europeans live in their gardens, and 

 have wondrously beautiful ones in which, as a rule, they take 

 keen interest and just pride. Very fast are we following in their 

 footsteps. 



When the pioneer in Colonial times sat on the stump of the 

 tree he had felled to rest and enjoy the view, he had as comfort 

 able a seat as many of his wealthy descendants still provide in their 

 gardens, if, indeed, they provide any at all. Most out-of-door 

 furniture is hopelessly uncomfortable, crude, or inartistic quite 

 unnecessarily so, which is not to say that a split log laid between 

 two trees for a seat in a wild garden is not everything it ought to 

 be. But a little more thought expended on a seat, a fountain, or 

 other detail, seemingly trivial and unimportant, makes a surprising 

 difference in the effect, and does much to lift a country home 

 above the level of the commonplace. The furnishings need not 

 be expensive, but they should be well adapted to their uses and 

 they ought to be beautiful. 



Garden seats, like other out-of-door furniture, may be of either 

 one of two kinds made at home or manufactured to be sold. 

 Both are possible to people of small means. The rustic garden seat, 

 as commercially manufactured out of rough logs, contorted branches 

 and twisted roots, with all their natural excrescences left on to 

 torture the sitter, may be provided by a gentle, well-meaning little 

 woman simply because it is everywhere offered for sale and she 



