COURTYARDS 63 



formal precision is the chief quality. Without 

 perhaps going so far as to say that there is any 

 position in which flowers are out of place, it may 

 yet be conceded that the entrance court is not in 

 need of beds of flowers for its adornment. Indeed, 

 it is most successfully treated without their aid, and 

 the combination of wall, hedge, gravelled court, and 

 broad border of turf will be found to provide the 

 best material for its composition. 



Although, in our aim at restraint and a simple 

 dignity, we may make a rule to dispense with flowers, 

 it does not follow that the forecourt should be 

 necessarily formal or rigidly symmetrical. A per- 

 fectly balanced architectural treatment can, of course, 

 be made very beautiful, and represents perhaps the 

 ideal method to be employed. But some houses 

 will not stand too much severity, and where the 

 building itself is not symmetrically designed, a 

 succession, maybe, of ivy-clad gables of no particular 

 size or grouping, there are many ways of ensuring 

 dignity and restraint without recourse to an unbend- 

 ing formalism. And even in the most carefully 

 prepared design, a fine tree, or group of trees, can 

 never be considered as an intruder. Trees that are 



