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THE HOUSE THAT WAS BUILT 

 FOR A GARDEN 



ARTHUR W. COLTON 



Editors' Note: Because garden and house are so inevitably linked, so essentially interdependent, we 

 believe that gardeners everywhere will find much to interest and inspire in this series of articles, especially 

 prepared for us by Mr. Colton, which presents some happy solutions achieved by Americans of skill and 

 imagination. Preceding articles may be' found in The Garden Magazine for December, 192 1, and January. 

 1922. 



III. MAKING THE HOME FACE GARDENWARD 



IHE problem of the relatively small house and not exten- 

 sive garden may be artistically less inspiring than the 

 H problems of large country houses and estates, but it is 

 socially a more important matter. It concerns the 

 lives of multitudes of people instead of the relatively few. It 

 concerns all those of moderate means who wish to bring beauty 

 and peace into their lives — lives that are passed in villages, 

 towns, the residence sections of lesser cities and the suburbs of 

 great ones. 



The trouble is not that the majority of us live in "Spoon 

 River," for we do not, though there are more of its grim ironies 

 around us than we realize. The trouble is that so many of us 

 live in "Main St.," with its vulgarities of soul, trivialities of 

 mind, ugliness of look, and narrowness of outlook. " Main St." 

 is not unhappy; but it is low grade civilization, and knows no 

 better. 



But if any dwelling house there had a fair garden behind it, 



and a love of flowers in comely array within it, the street in part 

 would no longer be "Main St." If you could graft the love of 

 flowers and ordered gardens upon it, you might change its 

 knarled and stunted social fruitage into something nearer the 

 apples of the Hesperides. Any kind of beauty, or poetry, or 

 any touch of finer issues, will make the difference, but there 

 probably is, for most "Main St." people, more culture in flower 

 gardens than in university extension courses; first because in 

 raising flowers you are doing it yourself and are learning by 

 contact with things, with the concrete realities of a subject; and 

 second (which follows from the first) because the interest is 

 likely to be more vital and continuing. It is an ancient tale. 

 "We receive but what we give," is not quite true; but somehow 

 or other the thing that is worked for is worth more. 



An arid and unlovely society is not a matter especially of 

 slums and factory towns, unlovely as they may be. It flour- 

 ishes where the people sit on their front porches, of lathy pillars 



WHERE GARAGE AND GARDEN ARE A HARMONIOUS UNIT 



The house itself necessarily fronting northward, its designer, Mr. Charles Barton Keen, adroitly converted defect into 

 distinction by developing the rear area in a manner to focus attention. Home of Mr. Graham-Clapp, Sewickley, Pa. 



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