SUBURBAN GARDENING 



may be principles capable of wide application and decalogues 

 of gardening sins to avoid, just as there are simple and whole- 

 some rules which suffice to keep a person in ordinary health. 



Roughly speaking, architecture in the suburbs shows two 

 widely differing types. There is the stately and imposing 

 "Colonial" house, by which designation nowadays is meant 

 a house of good proportions, balanced, of the square and 

 substantial type which held sway until about 1830. At the 

 other end of the architectural programme is the modern cot- 

 tage, picturesque and piquant, which, when seen at its best, 

 is a building full of individuaUty and charm. These are the 

 two extremes, while between them are innumerable houses 

 partaking slightly of the nature of both, and leaning with more 

 or less definiteness to one type or the other. 



Take first the difficulties which beset the Colonial house 

 in the suburbs, largest of which perhaps looms the problem 

 of a house on a lot too small for it. If newly built, its author 

 may have desired simply to put up as large a house as he 

 might on the ground at his disposal, building with a cheerful 

 indifference to the surroundings. If an old house, probably 

 it once had its setting of stately trees and a fine old garden; 

 but other houses have encroached on its garden space, new 

 streets have been cut through, until its draperies and garden 

 accessories have been shorn like the clothes of the old woman 

 who fell asleep on the king's highway. Near Boston there are 

 many houses so affiicted. A low stone wall separates the 

 place from the sidewalk, and usually a curving path leads 

 across the tiny lawn to the doorway, or a semicircular drive 

 makes the approach and there is no walk at all. On each side 

 of the path or beside the door and against the house are groups 

 of shrubs and small evergreens, but the shrubs look futile and 

 inadequate in comparison with the house, and the grassed 



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