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[The link that binds the house and the garden, though fully realized and felt, is at the same time often intangible and 
elusive. 
In the subtle union and harmony of the two elements—outdoors and indoors—with the perfect transition from the 
one to the other in both directions, the charm of the garden as a part of the home is best expressed. Yet little attention has 
been given to the coordination of all the things and materials that enter into use here. 
cussed under this department. 
It 1s such subjects that will be dis- 
The first article, by Mr. Aymar Embury, II, appropriately deals with “Doorways to the Garden,” 
and will be followed by others discussing such subjects as ““A Successfully Remodeled House and Its Garden,” “Living Porches 
and Sun-Rooms,” “Kitchen Entrances and Gardens,” “Subsidiary Structures of the Garden and Grounds,” etc., etc. 
Readers 
who have special problems before them in connecting the various parts and units of the house and the garden, indoors and out, 
are invited to confer with this department.—EDITOR. | 
Doorways to the Garden 
Aymar Empury, II 
HE architect regards the garden 
from a standpoint in many ways 
unlike that of the 
owner of the gar- 
den—the actual gar- 
dener—and also unlike 
that of the landscape 
architect. This point of 
view is less concerned 
with the garden as a 
success in floriculture 
than as a pattern of de- 
sign; an attitude of . 
mind justly abhorred by 
every 00d gardener; 
and yet one after all 
which may have some- 
thing in it; at any rate 
the purpose of the ar- 
ticles I am to write for THE GARDEN 
MAGAZINE is to set forth this unnatural 
viewpoint in its best colors, with the 
hope that perhaps it may not in all 
respects be useless and false. 
The first trouble that one is apt to 
find with the architect is that he can- 
not regard the garden—or the garden- 
ing—as of more than secondary impor- 
tance. We are such a self centred lot. 
that the garden seems to us valuable 
primarily as a setting for houses, and 
as a means of tieing it into the land- 
scape. Of course one of the purposes 
of the landscape architect is to cover up 
the house with trees or bushes or vines 
so as to make it less a blot on the land- 
scape; and with this purpose we archi- 
tects, to some extent, sympathize, 
although we don’t want the process car- 
ried too far. .Mr. Walter Cope, who was 
the architect of some of the lovely new 
buildings at Princeton, one day was he- 
ing shown how fast the ivy was grow- 
ing, and suggested instead of wasting 
time in building the buildings of carved 
stone and then covering them up with 
ivy, that they be sodded. 
Nevertheless the house is a purely 
artificial object and cannot be planted 
down in any naturalistic setting, no 
matter how beautiful this setting may 
be, without an inevitable dissonance. 
The artificial and the natural must be 
tied together, their junction must be 
glossed over and decorated, and this 
from the architect’s point of view is the 
chief importance of the garden and the 
general development of the gardens 
about the house. Of course to the aver- 
An excellent example of the doorway from house to 
garden is seen in the residence of Mr. James L. Breese 
at Southampton, L. I. The upper picture shows the 
splendid harmony of the house and garden. 
175 
age householder this way of seeing the 
garden is heretical; to her a garden is 
simply a place to grow flowers, and if 
these flowers are luxuriant enough and 
arranged in somewhat tidy beds with 
little paths between them and occasional 
“objects of interest,” 
such as sundials, seats 
and gazing globes scat- 
tered about, there is 
garden enough. 
The landscape archi- 
tect looks at the matter 
from a third point of 
view, to him the garden 
is the feature of para- 
mount importance, and 
in his mind the house is 
chiefly interesting as an 
accessory or setting for 
the garden, rather than 
a starting point for all 
design about it. 
HE architect’s chief concern with a 
garden is to see that it develops 
well from the house, in other words that 
the principal vistas in the garden corre- 
spond with vistas or axes of the house, 
or that the garden vistas are so ar- 
ranged that they can be viewed from 
proper places in the living room, dining 
room or hall of the house itself. 
The garden may be very lovely itself, 
and yet not hold very successfully to 
the house, because the vistas do not 
agree with those of the house, and be- 
cause the doorways to the garden do 
not enter it as they should, and this is 
one of several points where the archi- 
tect feels that the average garden de- 
sign misses perfection. We most of us 
want something more than flowers and 
paths in a garden; we want the flowers 
to march beside the paths in orderly 
array, and we want the paths to lead 
us from one point to another in a logical 
and natural way. We want something 
of geometry mixed with our floriculture, 
and while with the gardener we want 
great masses of bloom at every season 
of the summer, we want also to ap- 
proach them by an expected way, not 
just to happen upon them. 
There are others besides the archi- 
tects who feel the need of geometric 
forms in the garden, and we find many 
