The Garden Magazine, December, 1921 



189 



A BEAUTIFULLY SATISFYING "PERFECTION WITHOUT PRECISION" 



Without any loss of dignity or any belittling pettinesses nature has here been moulded to suit man's inclination; turf 

 flowing freely to meet the fringed woodland, orderly and yet unhampered masses of color give a rare impression of com- 

 bined spaciousness and intimacy. The visitor at once senses the friendly welcome of these gardens and their restful freedom 



Many are thirty feet high with trunks twelve inches in diameter. 

 These surround the garden, border the forecourt and terraces, 

 and form a marvelous contrast of blue green with the Oaks and 

 Maples. 



THE house was built in 191 7 in the middle of a twenty-six 

 acre tract of woods, which seems to have had no special fea- 

 ture except a ravine along the southern border. Its extraordi- 

 nary success was built up from ordinary conditions. 



As the prevailing summer breezes are from the southwest, a 

 broad swath was cut through the trees from southwest to north- 

 east. This swath, which determined the facing of the house, is 

 now a broad lawn sweeping down southwestward to the ravine, 

 and opening on this lawn are the main living rooms. 



The house is Indiana limestone, with variegated slate roof. 

 The soffit of the broadly overhanging eaves is painted in simple 

 designs, in red, black, white, blue, and gold; and the ceilings of the 

 second-story loggias are in old tapestry, blue and gold. The 



awnings are Venetian sail-cloth. The general scheme is of Ital- 

 ian suggestion. The forecourt, paved and enclosed with iron 

 grilles between stone posts, is on the northeast front; the drive- 

 way passes through it; and beyond the court to the northeast 

 stretches a tapis vert, a straight grassy avenue five hundred feet 

 long, thickly bordered with trees and making a dramatic ap- 

 proach to the great garden, which is most lovely in composition 

 and all-summer colors. 



The beauty of the Ryerson place as a whole, the gracious Tight- 

 ness of Mr. Shaw's work as a composition, cannot be conveyed 

 either by description or photographs; and yet one can hardly 

 look thoughtfully at the plates and not feel that there is some- 

 thing here often longed for and seldom seen — a perfection 

 without precision, an abundance without confusion, a dignity 

 without effort, a something beyond all these, a something in- 

 describable, which quiets the restless dissatisfactions one has 

 had in the contemplation of houses and gardens, and gives one a 

 sense of happiness enclosed in a cloudless peace. 



