252 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 



place on the walls of an Adirondack cottage. We all know 

 this. But how often do we see a similar recognition of 

 the primal beauty of fitness regulating the selection of the 

 plants we place near our houses, or those we associate 

 closely together in our grounds? Our architects have 

 learned that there should be some relationship between a 

 house and its surroundings — not only as regards the dif- 

 ference between city and country situations, but as re- 

 gards that between country situations of various sorts. 

 But our gardeners and their employees are slow to recog- 

 nize canons of this sort. They try to make little landscape 

 effects upon sites where the entire domination of architec- 

 tural factors would prescribe at least some degree of for- 

 mality ; and with the lawns and plants suitable for broad, 

 fertile inland districts, they surround houses built on the 

 mountain-side or the verge of the ocean's cliffs. Nature, 

 they think, has nowhere known her business ; and they 

 themselves have but a single receipt with which to make 

 up for her unintelligence. 



Few spots likely to be chosen for the homes of peo- 

 ple who have any money at all to spend upon gardening 

 are wholly devoid of natural individuality ; and few kinds 

 of natural individuality wholly lack suggestions of beauty. 

 It should be the business of an artist, or of an owner who 

 professes to care for his grounds, to understand and ap- 

 preciate these suggestions, and to study how he may 

 enhance, purify, accentuate and glorify them. Very often 

 lawns, at least, are desirable, although most of the other 

 devices of the average gardener are less likely to be so. 

 But even lawns are undesirable in a region where there is 

 nothing to suggest them, and the fact that they have been 

 created with great difficulty will always be plain to an 

 observant eye. Thus they will lack the beauty of appro- 

 priateness to their surroundings ; and they will be 

 stamped as vulgar because they must seem ostentatious. 

 Everywhere and always the true lover of outdoor beauty 

 will listen for the theme which Nature supplies ; and in all 

 his variations he will respect this theme. Often a great 

 saving of money will result from adopting this plan rather 

 than exemplifying the "popular creed"; and yet a far 

 higher degree of beauty will have been obtained. Some- 

 times, on the other hand, it will be more costly and trou- 

 blesome to follow out Nature's scheme than to create 

 grounds of the conventional type, and less "show "will 

 be made for the money. But a man who truly loves 

 Nature and art, and has felt their refining power, will 

 hardly be deterred from righteousness by this considera- 

 tion. 



Garden Flowers and their Arrangement. 



THE very word arrangement, when it is connected with 

 a flower-garden, suggests formality, to a greater or 

 less degree. But there is such a thing as arrangement 

 which has in it no formal element. For instance, generally 

 speaking, the objects which an artist paints in his picture 

 are relatively arranged, but with a studied avoidance of 

 formality. But where is the connection between a picture 

 and a flower-garden ? It seems absurd to ask the ques- 

 tion ; the garden is a picture in itself. This, however, is 

 something which we fail to realize, and, as a consequence, 

 the garden is seldom arranged like the picture, formal 

 or not. 



It does not seem as though there is any reasonable ex- 

 cuse for an unpicturesque garden ; money is often lavished 

 upon it, and it receives the best attention from skilled cul- 

 tivators. There is not a suspicion of art in the arrange- 

 ment of anything, and the gardener is expected to spend 

 most of his time in nourishing his plants, often curbing 

 their freedom of growth, and sometimes forcing them into 

 artificial appearances. What we want is a revolution in 

 the typical garden. The grounds around the villas and 

 cottages of our summer resorts need the same kind of 

 attention from good landscape-gardeners as the houses 

 themselves have already received from distinguished archi- 



tects. The beautiful house is rarely set in the midst of a 

 beautiful garden ; we see everywhere the prim order and 

 conventionality of Tulip, Pansy, Geranium and Coleus 

 beds. Why do we not see more of the annuals, for exam- 

 ple? Where are the beautiful Poppies, Marigolds, Phloxes 

 and Trailing Nasturtiums that were familiar to us in our 

 grandmothers' gardens? Possibly it does not occur to us 

 that we do not take the same personal interest in our flow- 

 ers that our grandmothers did ! But this is the fact, never- 

 theless. 



Regarding either formality or informality in arrangement, 

 two or three principles of good taste must be observed. The 

 plan of the garden should distinctly connect itself with the 

 house and its style of architecture. The lawn should 

 be a plain stretch of green, and not a setting for vivid 

 flower-colors geometrically arranged. The ground-plan 

 of the garden-beds is of secondary importance compared 

 with what is called, in perspective drawing, its "picture 

 plane." In other words, the color and form of a Lily pro- 

 jected in relief against a dark background are of more im- 

 portance, artistically considered, than the shape of the bed 

 in which the Lily grows. 



Nature suggests formality in many plant forms — Mari- 





Fig. 42. — Poppies and their background. 



golds, Asters, Hollyhocks, Balsams and Cockscombs ; 

 there is no reason in massing these so their figures are 

 lost in a confusion of foliage. Phlox, Coreopsis, Larkspurs 

 and Sweet Williams ; these have no symmetry to lose, and 

 they can be arranged in groups to suit their immediate 

 surroundings. But who considers the surroundings of his 

 flowers ? Imagine a careful planter sitting down before a 

 plan of his garden and studying an arrangement for its 

 purple and yellow, or its scarlet and white ! It would, in- 

 deed, be an effort of imagination ; not one of us ever saw 

 the thing done. 



Few persons realize the need of white in the garden ; it 

 ought to hold ascendancy there. The white Aster and the 

 yellow or the orange Marigold are quite companionable. 

 Sweet Alyssum and white Candytuft are adapted to fill in 

 between larger, high-colored flowers which might other- 

 wise conflict. The Calendula is also a fitting neighbor for 

 white Candytuft, and the yellow and white Eschscholtzias 

 are boon companions. Yellow and white are always beauti- 

 ful when associated together. 



Monotony is intolerable; nothing is so deadening in its 

 effect upon one's happiness in life ; if the flower-garden 



