THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 



have given excellent object-lessons in suiting house 

 and grounds to each other and both to the surround- 

 ing country. 



Personality in a garden is as unmistakable as it is 

 in a human being, and as elusive. The garden that 

 expresses personality is rarely the work of the pro- 

 fessional landscape artist. It is a quality born only 

 where the man or the woman who loves the place 

 and means to live there plans and contrives and labors 

 to fulfil an individual demand ; a garden so constructed 

 contains more than just the stones and green growth 

 that meet the eye, in the same manner that a picture is 

 more than its paint and canvas, or even the cunning 

 workmanship that has skilfully placed the one upon the 

 other. And this personality is precisely the peculiar 

 characteristic of most of the gardens in the midst of 

 which these writing and painting folk have set up their 

 habitations. 



Perhaps the best known of such places are those 

 among the Cornish hills in New Hampshire, where a 

 colony of professional people have been building and 

 gardening for some five and twenty years, and have 

 evolved a type of garden that combines something of 

 the flavor of its wild setting with a distinct feeling of 

 home, gardens that are American and at the same 

 time intensely individual. Various they are, some 

 scarcely larger than a tennis-court, and simple as a 

 wild pink ; others occupying a considerable space and 



126 



