ACCESSORIES OF THE GARDEN 37 



signed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and would raise the level of beauty 

 in any garden where it should be placed; but there are few such 

 aids. Various English firms send out lists of extremely well- 

 designed tables, chairs, settees, and so on, though there are some 

 lapses from good looks, even in these. In our own country, I 

 think of only one firm whose work is good, and their models are, 

 if I am not mistaken, taken from English ones. There is a com- 

 pany in America, too, now sending out stuff for gardens which is 

 as ugly, as stultifying, as such things can be. It is sad to see it 

 given circulation. 



Wood, then, for seats; and when we have such seats, where 

 shall they be placed? The simplest placing of a good bench or 

 seat in the little garden is at the far end of a walk; or at the two 

 ends of a cross walk; or within a small shelter that shall form the 

 terminal feature of the little garden, and shall entirely supplant 

 the pergola, which has no place whatever in our scheme of things 

 here, so difficult is it to use properly, and so atrocious is it when 

 out of place. The proper use of even a tiny pergola, made, per- 

 haps, of posts and saplings, calls, in the little garden, for the 

 most expert and exquisite knowledge of such things; I do not 

 venture lightly on such ground, and shall consider that the per- 

 gola, then, has no place in the average small garden. A thing 

 that is, however, in place in the little garden, is, somewhere, a 

 gate. A little garden-gate may give the most enchanting effect, 

 if of the right material, well designed and properly placed. The 

 pictorial value of the gate is known to everyone. But it must be 

 charmingly framed in living green — a wooden gate, either soHd, 

 or partly solid in a wall; a gate of wood, as I have suggested in 

 another chapter, set among foliage of the screened wire fence; 

 or, best of all, the gate of delicately conceived wrought-iron, 

 preferably from some old French, Italian, or Flemish model. 

 Such gates were like flowers; indeed, a flower was often taken by 



