14 



The Garden Magazine, August, 1919 



EVERYONE LOVES MAKING BELIEVE 

 And when it's making believe you are a fairy, as little Miss Gloria 

 Gould is doing in this play given at the Gould estate at Lakewood, life's 

 cup of happiness simply spills over 



TH E realities of beauty — or lack of them — are not found 

 out by working in the garden. It is only the time spent 

 in idling, or playing, or entertaining there that brings this 

 side of it into relief. Hence, if only for the sake of the garden 

 and its best development, garden entertainment and recrea- 

 tion must take its place in our scheme of things. But it is 

 not the garden alone that will develop under this use of it. 

 Every entertainment in a garden is an inspiration to the 

 entertained; physically, mentally, and spiritually they are 

 refreshed and recreated as nowhere else. And since re- 

 creation is the sole purpose and the end and aim of all enter- 

 tainment, what can be offered, therefore, that will equal enter- 

 tainment in the garden? 



For charity's sake grown-ups as well as little folks have of 

 course always served in entertainments of a public and semi- 

 public character, given indoors; but not until the revival 

 of the pageant at a comparatively recent date, did outdoor 

 possibilities begin to be considered. On top of this came 

 the war, bringing its heroic demands and heroic enterprises 

 both indoor and out to meet them — great shows, spectacles, 

 bazaars and pageants — all of which have shown us the way 

 for many things, now that peace days are once more come. 

 With or without the excuse of charity therefore, why not pro- 

 ceed? Must there be an "excuse"? It seems to me not — or 

 that the pleasure of the doing for the players, and of the ob- 



serving for the others, is sufficient without a qualifying rea- 

 son. Why not? Tennis and golf are for their enthusiasts — 

 but there are many to whom other appeals are greater. 



My contention is that the entertainment out of doors 

 should be as varied and as rounded as that within the house — 

 now that the gardens are provided wherein it may be so 

 ordered. Hence the use of the garden theatre, even lacking 

 the purpose to entertain on a large scale or with professional 

 players therein. Of its charm where entertainment on a 

 large scale is intended it is hardly necessary to speak. The 

 combination of the art of the stage with the art of the garden — 

 the natural beauties of a lovely creation wherein living trees, 

 shrubs, flowers, birds and sunlight, overarched by the sky, 

 are substituted for the scene painter's efforts and the elec- 

 trician's devices — furnishes so perfect a whole that imagina- 

 tion cannot conceive anything more delightful. One of the 

 charms of the film drama indeed, is that its scenes are real; 

 we get the sense of outdoors when the scenes demand out- 

 doors, because they are actually filmed out of doors. 



OLD garden games for all times and occasions have largely 

 fallen out of memory altogether it seems, or into the 

 desuetude to which ridicule consigns all that it attacks, good 

 or bad. I am emboldened to speak up for one of the latter, 

 however, by reason not only of its ancient lineage but be- 

 cause a famous street still is known by its name — Pall Mall — 

 and also because it is a very excellent game indeed. I am 

 willing to admit that the modern form known as croquet is 

 not worthy of its illustrious ancestor, the very old game of 

 pall mall. This latter I commend for serious consideration, 

 especially for the small garden, as the actual space required 

 for the "mall," which may be gravelled or in turf, is only 

 seven by forty feet. 



Another game of equal antiquity, and one that should have 

 a place in every garden where there is room for it, by reason 

 of its historical association if not on its own merits, is bowls. 

 For long before we were an independent nation every village 

 and near-village had its bowling green; and the name still 

 lingers not only to designate the little park that ends the 

 most famous street in our land — Broadway, ending at Bowling 

 Green, down by The Battery — but as the appellation of 

 several towns throughout the country, some of them quite 

 pretentious. Requiring a square of about seventy feet or a 

 circle of that diameter, level and closely shaven, this ancient 

 game — the favorite sport of the Revolutionary smart set as 

 well of the common folks — is picturesque and interesting. 

 A terrace at one side giving a view down upon the "green" 

 is an ideal arrangement, or it may be altogether below the 

 level of the surrounding garden, simply a sunken tapis vert 

 with grassy banks sloping thereto. 



One of the most interesting and at the same time least 

 troublesome games, because requiring no installation what- 

 soever, is boggia. It needs only any sort of lawn space, at 

 one side of which a starting line twenty feet long may be 

 stretched or marked, from any point on which the players 

 may roll their balls. 



A variation on lawn tennis in the form of tether tennis is 

 good fun — and needs but a twenty foot square. Inasmuch 

 as there must be a central pole ten feet high however it should 

 not be in a prominent place, for there is no very great element 

 of beauty in this. 



