A typical English cottage garden, charming, but impossible for us to copy 

 economically. Millionaires imitate this sort of thing but not laborers 



English laborers have more time than ours for gardening. Simple topiary 

 work like this is better than figures of men, birds, etc., etc. 



Lessons From English Cottage Gardens— By wilhelm Miller, 



New 

 York 



WE CANNOT REPRODUCE THE CHARM OF OLD ENGLISH EXAMPLES- OUR LABORER'S HOMES A NATIONAL DIS- 

 GRACE -THE ONLY WAY AMERICAN COTTAGES AND THEIR GARDENS MAY BECOME ALTOGETHER LOVELY 



[Editor's Note. — This is the twelfth of a series of articles on the materials of English gardening. A companion series in Country Life in America is devoted to the 

 different kinds of gardening.] 



I CAN think of nothing lovelier of its kind 

 than that passage in "Aylmer's Field" 

 in which Tennyson describes typical homes 

 of English laborers: 



"Here was one that, summer-blanched, 

 Was parcel-bearded with the traveler's joy 

 In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here 

 The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth 

 Broke from a bower of vine and honeysuckle: 

 One looked all rosetree, and another wore 

 A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars: 

 This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers 

 About it; this, a milky-way on earth, 

 Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens, 

 A lily-avenue climbing to the doors; 

 One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves 

 A summer burial deep in hollyhocks; 

 Each, its own charm." 



People who have traveled more than I say 

 that English cottages and their gardens are 

 the most beautiful in the world. I saw 

 thousands of them and they were endlessly 

 delightful. Yet there is almost nothing 

 about them which I should care to have my 

 countrymen copy. 



This conclusion is so unexpected and 

 disappointing that I must defend it at con- 

 siderable length, before setting forth what 

 seems to me a better scheme. In the first 

 place, I must answer the question which 

 I am sure will spring into the minds of my 

 readers, viz.: "If there is nothing to copy, 

 why it is that everybody is so enthusiastic 

 about English cottage gardens? " 



HALF THE CHARM EXPLAINED 



In my opinion about one-half of this 

 universal rhapsody is due simply to the 

 fact that every cottage has a garden. The 

 American is used to seeing ugliness every- 

 where — wooden buildings, no national style 



of architecture, billboards, big advertise- 

 ments and houses without gardens. When 

 he goes to England he sees beauty every- 

 where — houses built of brick and stone, 

 a national style of architecture, no bill- 

 boards, shop signs relatively small and 

 modest, and every foot of ground cultivated 

 to the utmost. These general conditions 

 are enough to put the American in an 

 enthusiastic mood, and enthusiasm rises 

 to ecstasy when he finds that even the labor- 

 ing people live amid beautiful surroundings. 

 Every cottage is built of permanent material 

 and every cottage is surrounded by fruits, 

 flowers or other forms of living beauty. It 

 all seems too good to be true, because 

 American laborers generally live in big 

 tenements or else in monotonous rows of 

 wooden cottages, which are temporary and 

 subject to disastrous fires, while the yards are 

 usually bare and shabby or foul with weeds 

 and rubbish. Therefore, I say the infinite 

 number and variety of English cottage 

 gardens is enough to explain five-tenths 

 of the American tourist's enthusiasm. 



FOUR- TENTHS MORE EXPLAINED 



The second great reason why we cannot 

 copy English cottage gardens is that about 

 four-tenths of their charm is due to the 

 cottages themselves and these do not fit our 

 present mode of life at all. I wish you 

 could see the book that lies before me as 

 I write — Ditchfield's "English Cottages 

 and their Doorway Gardens." It is full 

 of beautiful photographs. But every time 

 I put one hand over the cottage, its garden 

 shrinks enormously in interest. The soul 

 of it is gone. Old cottages in England are 

 227 



always either beautiful or picturesque, 

 but on the practical side they are invariably 

 deficient. 



For instance, thatched roofs are dreams 

 of beauty, and once upon a time they were 

 economical in England, but in America 

 they cost too much, and even in England 

 it is against the law in some districts to 

 thatch new cottages. Small window panes 

 are poetic, but hard to clean. Rambling 

 structures may be lovable, but they mul- 

 tiply steps and waste a woman's strength. 

 Crooked stairs may be romantic, but they 

 are dangerous. High roofs mean a waste 

 of room. 



The English cottage which nestles so 

 sweetly among the ever- blooming roses was 

 developed before people knew anything 

 about germs and before the importance of 

 ventilation and sunlight was understood. 

 Picturesqueness is almost invariably asso- 

 ciated with dirt, and dirt breeds disease. 

 Dearly as I love the picturesque I would not 

 buy it at the cost of healthfulness. It hurts 

 me to say so, but picturesqueness always 

 means increased cost, both for construction 

 and maintenance; and it usually means 

 unsanitary conditions. 



Indeed, we enormously overrate the value 

 of the picturesque as contrasted with the 

 beautiful. The traveler finds the former 

 more entertaining but for living purposes 

 the latter wears best. Now the beauty of 

 English cottages is chiefly due to the national 

 quality in their architecture. But this 

 grew out of their conditions — climatic, 

 economic and historical — not ours. For 

 instance, the soul of an English cottage is 

 its fireplace, and in that climate an open 



