May, 1 9 13 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



153 



The path-approach to the small house may be planned so that by judicious planting the premises will appear more extensive than in reality they are 



Small Gardens for Small Places 



By F. F. Rockwell 



MERICA is so big, our undertakings along 

 all gardening lines have been so new to our 

 experience, that taking into account our in- 

 terest in things that were extensive in their 

 operation, we have, until recently, been giv- 

 ing less attention to the smaller problems. 

 In the art of gardening at least we have now reached a 

 turning point in this respect — and "gardening" is here used 

 in the wider sense; not a bed of flowers or 

 a patch of vegetables, but what might per- 

 haps be more accurately connotated to 

 American readers by the term landscape- 

 gardening, or garden-scaping. The two 

 last terms, however, are not synonymous. 

 In fact, so little attention have we paid to 

 this subject that there is, as yet, no adequate 

 vocabulary in which to discuss it. We must 

 realize the fact that in many things other 

 countries can lend us ideas that will be to 

 our advantage to adopt or adapt, as for in- 

 stance, England, France and Japan in the 

 matter of private and of amateur garden- 

 ing. There, and especially so in Japan, 

 gardening is a real part of the every-day 

 life of the people. Up to a comparatively 

 recent period its consideration in America, 

 since Colonial times, has been largely in- 

 cidental and superficial. Fortunately this 



A pathway leading towards the 

 boundary line of a neighboring lot 

 may be so planned as to lend an 

 effect of spaciousness to the com- 

 paratively small acreage 



is changing. Nationally we are now settling to a realiza- 

 tion that the houses we are building and the grounds they 

 are occupying may be in our personal possession for some 

 time to come, or handed down to our children, and it is im- 

 pressing itself upon us that it is worth while to make our 

 homes as beautiful and as permanent as we possibly can. 

 Suburban sections, instead of being merely temporarily oc- 

 cupied until "business" grows out to them, are becoming 

 settled in the expectancy that they will con- 

 tinue to be residential sections and being 

 improved and built up accordingly. Hence 

 one finds many well-built and artistic houses, 

 surrounded in the majority of cases by 

 limited ground space, where the owners' 

 ideas of garden-scaping have for the most 

 part been obtained only from the expansive 

 and expensive (and often inartistic) 

 "estates" of the countryside — a model ab- 

 solutely unsuited to his own requirements. 



THE FIRST LAW OF GARDENING 



The first law of gardening is that of 

 proportion. Now the owner of two or of 

 twenty acres may have room for a little 

 of everything in his layout — and as the 

 person who plans it for him is likely to be 

 the one who is selling him the plants, 

 shrubs and trees for the job, he is very 

 likely to get a little of everything. But you 



