228 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



December, 1909 



hearth keeps a cottage warm enough. Not 

 so with us. Again, you cannot tell from 

 the outside of an English house what the 

 different rooms are used for. This is 

 because the English have a passion for 

 privacy. We do not, and our favorite type, 

 the Georgian or Colonial, frankly reveals 

 the purpose of every part. 



Other fundamental differences could be 

 given, but I wish to give more attention to 

 the gardens than the cottages. It is suffi- 

 cient if my readers are persuaded that to 

 make exact copies of English cottages is 

 foolish, and that we shall never have charm- 

 ing cottage gardens in America until we 

 have charming cottages in an American 

 style. 



How shall we get an American style of 

 cottage? Many people believe that we 

 shall evolve it by adapting the English style 

 to our conditions. That idea is dear to 

 my heart, but I would rather abandon it 

 entirely than see America filled with cottages 

 that cost too much or do not fit the lives of 

 the people. The first thing for architects to 

 do is to satisfy American conditions, e.g., our 

 hotter summers and colder winters, the 

 higher cost of labor and of living, the dangers 

 from mosquitoes and flies, our passion for 

 comforts, conveniences, air, sunlight, clean- 

 liness, and our desire to reduce housework 

 to the minimum. Then, if there is anything 

 left of the English style, well and good, for 

 it is pleasant to be reminded that England 

 was our mother country. 



THE OTHER TENTH EXPLAINED 



It is my conviction that nine-tenths of 

 the charm of English cottage gardens 

 resides in the environment; only one-tenth 

 seems to me intrinsic. The gardens them- 

 selves owe their beauty to two elements — 

 the materials, or plants, and the national 

 style of gardening. 



THE MATERIAL TOO DIFFERENT 



The easiest way to prove that we cannot 

 copy English cottage gardens is to show that 



the material is too different. Let us go back 

 to Tennyson's description and run over his 

 list of plants. By "travelers joy" he 

 means Clematis Vitalba, which is some- 

 what like our own Clematis Virginiana. 

 English ivy will not luxuriate in our 

 Northern states as it does in Europe. 

 "Vine" means the European grape and we 

 cannot grow that outdoors east of the 

 Rockies. "Rose tree" is the same as 

 tree rose; we cannot grow standards. By 

 "jasmine" he means Jasminum officinale, 

 the white jessamine of the poets, which is 

 not hardy in the latitude of Philadelphia 

 without a sheltering wall and winter pro- 

 tection. 



But Tennyson's list is only the beginning 

 of trouble. Roses are the most precious 

 of all flowers. The English laboring man 

 gets large, double, fragrant roses from June 

 to October with a minimum of effort. He 

 does not have to contend with the rose 

 chafer, or "rose bug" as we wrongly call it. 

 In America roses do not bloom all summer 

 save on the Pacific Coast. Climbing roses 

 do not reach to the third story of a big house. 

 We find that roses require more care and 

 cause more loss and disappointment in 

 America than any other flower. 



All summer, the cottager's yard is gay 

 with flowers. While geraniums and cannas 

 are about the only bedding plants that 

 will bloom all summer here with a minimum 

 of attention, the English cottager can have 

 many others. To grow tuberous begonias 

 in America requires peculiar conditions and 

 considerable skill, but in England it is no 

 trick at all. An American laborer may have a 

 bed of coleus, which is as gaudy, flower- 

 less and monotonous as it can be. The 

 English laborer can grow the calceolarias, 

 a yellow flower like a lady's slipper, which 

 is as refined and distinguished as anything 

 you could wish. I saw thousands of front 

 yards gay with calceolarias. 



Even in winter an English laborer's gar- 

 den is beautiful because the grass is ever 

 green, whereas with us it gets brown. Then, 



too, the English climate is favorable for 

 broad-leaved evergreens, while that of the 

 North is not. Cottagers often propagate 

 their own box edging. English holly grows 

 wild. And best of all their ivy is evergreen 

 and grows like a weed. 



I cannot give other examples now, because 

 throughout this series of articles I have tried 

 to set down under "Trees," "Shrubs," 

 "Vines," "Perennials "etc., all the important 

 plants that thrive in England, but not in 

 America. 



THE STYLE OF GARDENING DIFFERENT 



Quite as important as the material in 

 these cottage gardens is the difficult question 

 of a national style in gardening. 



I was motoring through the Southern 

 counties of England as the guest of one 

 of America's best landscape gardeners 

 and we were exclaiming over the beauty 

 of the cottage gardens when I propounded 

 to my friend this question: "Is there any- 

 thing peculiarly British in these gardens?" 



"Not at all," he replied. "Of course 

 the cottages have a national quality and they 

 lend an English atmosphere to the gardens. 

 But the gardens themselves have the same 

 plants you see on the Continent, and there 

 is nothing particularly English in the design. 

 We do not see one type of cottage garden 

 repeated many times. Every garden seems 

 different. Indeed, I believe their beauty is 

 individual rather than national." 



This surprising conclusion may seem 

 at first to be reinforced by Tennyson's 

 passage which concludes with "Each its 

 own charm." Nevertheless, I believe there 

 is a national element there — hard to define, 

 but real. The nearest I can come to it is 

 to say that the English cottager is fond of 

 fruits, flowers and a low hedge or wall. He 

 trains grapes, plums and peaches on the 

 sunny walls of his cottage and ivy on the 

 others. He is likely to have dwarf fruits. 

 His garden is usually gay with flowers all 

 summer and is pretty sure to have one floral 

 specialty. His hedge or wall is not too high 





A shallow front yard and a deep back yard is the favorite idea at Bourne- 

 ■ville, where they have the best cottage gardens. Inside the hawthorn hedge 

 are flower beds. Portable iron work protects the hedge for a few years 



The English cottager's back yard is surrounded by a low hawthorn hedge. 

 You can see over it but it keeps out dogs, cats, chickens, children, and, to 

 some extent, thieves 



