Garden Furniture 343 



furniture, a small hand syringe should be filled at once with a 

 strong carbolic wash to be injected into the holes before the 

 varnish is applied. 



Old English gardens, and the copies of them that were made 

 in this new land during Colonial times, usually contained a few 

 choice pieces of wooden furniture that were painted white to cor 

 respond with the pillars, cornices, railings, pilasters and other trim 

 of the dwelling. Delightfully designed and comfortable set 

 tees, some with lattice patterns like Chinese fret-work on their 

 backs, and smooth slats for seats that shed the rain; straight 

 settees to place against a hedge at the end of a direct garden walk, 

 or on either side of the front door on the porch; semi-circular 

 settees for niches in garden walls or at the turn of a curved path; 

 circular settees to go around the trunk of a tree that afforded shade 

 or a fine view all these were counted desirable accessories of a 

 garden about a house built in the Georgian or Colonial style. 

 Happily such seats are being manufactured again to-day, the exact 

 copies of good old models. When soiled, they may be scrubbed 

 and finally repainted. They are heavy and do not overturn in 

 storms. If they can be given a permanent position and no 

 seat should ever be placed permanently where there is not either 

 a pleasant prospect, shade, or some other good reason for its being 

 there it pays to lay a few bricks or a shallow bed of concrete 

 where the seats rest on the soil, lest dampness injure them in time. 

 Such seats look best with a dark hedge or shrubbery for a back 

 ground against which the pattern of the white lattice at their backs 

 stands out in high relief. They are also appropriate and beautiful 

 in pergolas, since they, too, had their origin in Italy. But they 

 imply a certain formality of house and garden treatment, and are 

 as much out of place next a very modern-looking house or where 



