October, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



257 



Helps to Home Building 



The House Garden 



:]U HE garden is the great external beautifier of 

 the house. It is created for beauty alone 

 and for no other purpose. The house has 

 its utilitarian value. It is built for shelter, 

 for comfort, for pleasure, for everything, 

 in short, but its external form and artistic 

 aspect; these are qualities deliberately given to it by its de- 

 signer and are quite distinct and apart from its functional 

 purpose as a place of shelter. 



But the garden is sheer joy. It has nothing to do but to 

 grow and be beautiful. It is a place of pure enjoyment,, 

 arranged for the giving of pleasure, and without suggestion 

 of utilitarian purpose. That it adds to the beauty of a place 

 is, of course, a great good fortune, but even this is a beauty- 

 giving quality without hint of utility. 



No other part of the home is so completely divorced from 

 questions of use. The house is built because it has a useful 

 purpose to fulfill. It is furnished because the furniture is 

 necessary and has useful functions to perform. It is difficult 

 to add anything, even of the most ornamental quality, to the 

 house without giving some thought to its utility. But the gar- 

 den is free for beauty-making. It needs only to be beautiful to 

 fulfill the utmost utility, and this is done so gracefully and so 

 naturally that the mere idea of utility is utterly foreign to it. 

 There are gardens and gardens. Many very well dis- 

 posed persons have no eyes for gardens save those designated 

 as Italian. And the garden lover does not live who will 

 decry the beauty of these elaborate places, decked with a 

 sumptuous adornment of architecture and sculpture, planted 

 with costly plants, arranged in a formal and beautiful man- 

 ner. A very high type of garden is this, rich in every pos- 

 sible resource of beauty, unquestionably the most beautiful 

 garden type we have. 



Quite a variety of reasons make the Italian garden beauti- 

 ful, and have, unquestionably, greatly furthered its vogue in 

 America. It is complete in itself and has been planned as 

 a unit from the first stone and the first plant. It is inclosed 

 within boundary lines which add enormously to its complete- 

 ness of effect, and help most materially in giving that unity 

 of result which is one of its chief charms. It has, moreover, 

 the distinction given it by an architectural framework, which 

 may be literally a bounding wall, a partial inclosure, or sepa- 

 rate structures which close in certain vistas or otherwise have 

 definite structural purposes to perform. In whatever form 

 architecture is introduced, it is a happy, joyous art of no great 

 structural value, architecture for adornment only, and pleas- 

 ing because of its adorning qualities. The planting, also, is 

 carried out on a prearranged scale, in which every shrub and 

 tree, every plant and flower, look toward the realization of a 

 settled end — an end of beauty, and of the most beauty. And 

 when in the midst of this loveliness an exquisite fountain, a 

 rare vase or a beautiful statue is set up, the crown has been 

 given to the work of art, and the fortunate owner may rest 

 satisfied that the utmost has been done for the adornment of 

 his home. 



Not every one may have an Italian garden, but most 

 owners may have a garden of some sort; must have, in fact, 

 unless his house is stood in a row and solemnly bounded on 

 either side by other houses as completely wanting in the 

 great beautifier of nature as his own. Even the Italian 

 garden can be quite a simple affair, for while it is always aided 

 by architectural and sculptural additions neither of these 

 great arts is actually essential to its making. 



An Italian garden is a formal garden, but a garden may 

 be planted in a formal way, without architectural and sculp- 

 tural adjuncts which are so generally considered as essentially 

 a part of the Italian type. A formal garden is, of course, 

 exactly what its name implies — a garden planted in a formal 

 way, with paths somewhat rigid in plan, with set borders and 

 definite planning in all its planting. Like the Italian garden 

 it presupposes a generous space for its development, and is 

 hardly suited to plots of restricted dimensions. 



The hardy garden is another interesting type of garden, 

 which has the supreme advantage of reproducing itself, sea- 

 son after season, with added growth and beauty each year. 

 If it be considered as a type itself it is only in its contents, 

 for it may be planted in a formal way, and it- actually con- 

 stitutes the larger part of the planting of the Italian garden; 

 or, to refer to another class, it may be planted in a wild and 

 natural manner, without thought of formal arrangement, 

 and left to grow as Nature herself may determine. 



Nor should the tree garden be neglected. This, once 

 more, is a garden that belongs to the large estate, for trees 

 require room for growth, and although their beauty may be 

 as great alone as in the mass. Every great public park is a 

 tree garden on a large scale, in which trees of many varieties 

 are grown under the happiest conditions, and give to the 

 people the fulness of their beauty. The great private 

 estate is also, in a sense, a tree garden, in which each tree is 

 carefully tended, and viewed, as it should be, as a natural 

 treasure beyond price. 



And then, the simple little flower garden, never too small 

 to be without beauty, never too slight in idea to be wanting 

 in grace, never too unimportant to be without dignity and 

 merit. The flower garden is the beginning of all gardens, 

 for it is the easiest made and the most lovingly tended. It 

 is the individual garden, the garden of the home, the personal 

 pastime of the owner. And its beauty is quite as measure- 

 less as the more sumptuous garden of the large landowner. 

 Size, indeed, has nothing to do with garden values, only 

 beauty. 



Wherever there is a bit of land around a house it should be 

 put to garden uses : it is there for that purpose and for no 

 other. It is possibly true that land exists that houses may be 

 built upon it, but the time is not yet ripe for this prepond- 

 erance of architecture upon the earth, and the day when it 

 may come is so far off that present-living souls need not be 

 deterred from the cultivation of their garden spots by the 

 hideous suggestion. The land is ours, and those who are 

 fortunate enough to possess any of it have no nobler duty to 

 themselves and to their neighbors than to install, cultivate 

 and develop the best garden their means and their tastes will 

 permit. 



This touches immediately on a distinct value of gardens 

 apart from their inherent quality as beautiners of the house. 

 A beautiful garden is seen of all men. A beautiful house 

 interior is the personal private property of the owner, ex- 

 isting for his own delight alone and for that of his selectest 

 friends. It is a selfish enjoyment, that of the interior of the 

 house, albeit a most natural one. But the garden is as fully 

 enjoyed by the public as by the owner. It is the owner's 

 contribution to public art, his gift to the aspect of his street 

 or road, his personal addition to the value of his own real 

 estate. This is sordid ground on which to defend the merits 

 of the garden, but it is a very real and definite ground that 

 need not be overlooked. 



