1'20 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ground is smooth and flat, the streets and boundaries straight, the 

 separate ownerships bv no means large. In such neighborhoods 

 the architect's share in the making of the scene is so predominant 

 that an error in the choice of the style of the house is almost 

 necessarily fatal to the effect of the house-scene. Where the sur- 

 roundings are mostly formal, much irregularity either of building 

 or of ground always seems out of place and affected ; unless, 

 indeed, nature has by chance supplied a site which by its steep 

 slopes or its rockiness conquers the surrounding formality and 

 compels to the picturesque. A many-angled and many-gabled 

 building on a smooth site in a straight-bounded inclosure is out 

 of keeping ; and so also, in the same situation, is a tangle of 

 bushes and bowlders and a sharply curved approach road. This 

 does not mean that where the streets are curved or for any reason 

 a house door is easiest reached by a curved line, the curve must be 

 forbidden and the path or road made straight ; but it does mean 

 the shunning of all purposeless curvature, such as is often to be 

 seen in most suburbs. Awkward and breadth-destroying lines of 

 approach are the rule in the suburbs, and the architect is often 

 responsible for them, for he frequently places the house door in 

 such a position that the path or road leading to it must necessarily 

 cut the ground before the house into lamentably small pieces, and 

 he does this, too, when a little thought might perhaps have brought 

 about that happiest of all arrangements, in which a stretch of 

 grass as long or longer than the building is brought without a 

 break up to the house wall itself. No subsequent planting can 

 obliterate mistakes in these controlling elements of the suburban 

 house-scene, the house and- the approach ; and no planting can 

 accomplish what it otherwise might, if by reason of uumindful- 

 ness of the effect of the house-scene as a whole, the framework of 

 the scene is wrongly put together. 



It is seldom that a suburban lot, after the house and approaches 

 are built, retains much of its former vegetation. A few large trees 

 m.iy survive the necessary gradings, but the natural ground cover- 

 ing is generally killed out. On the completion of the grading 

 grass is sown, and from the resulting sheet of green the house 

 walls and the boundary walls or fences rise abruptly. It is exceed- 

 ingly surprising to see, as one may everywhere, well designed 

 houses, adorned within with much rich ornament and probabh* 

 inhabited by people who appreciate art and nature, standing thus 



