The Garden Magazine, January, 1922 



253 



WHERE EVERYTHING SPARKLFS WITH AIRY BRILLIANCY 



Even through so unimaginative a medium as the camera a delightful sense of color makes its way — it is quite easy to visualize 

 the lucent delicacy of Wisteria bloom and the deep, shining green of the creepers behind. The light, clear beauty which char- 

 acterizes our northeastern climate and landscape is here epitomized. "Timberline," Bryn Mawr; Charles A. Piatt, architect 



original, imaginative, lucid. Its feeling was high and fine, rather 

 than deep and rich. It puzzled the European critic — why the 

 Vast shaggy continent should produce a literature notable not 

 for crude power, but for refinement and good taste. It was 

 not the product of a continent, however, but mainly of certain 

 cultured groups; and somehow, one feels that this pale blue sky, 

 and thin-soiled countryside— hilly, but not mountainous; pleas- 

 ant, often exquisitely beautiful, but seldom grand or probably 

 thrilling — must have also had something to do with those 

 characteristics. 



If an Italian inspiration in respect to gardens and dwellings 

 is brought here and put through the alembic of American condi- 

 tions and a New England temperament, would not the result 

 be something like those old-world inspirations in the hands of 

 Irving and Longfellow and Lowell? 



It is interesting to note that the Italian suggestion seems 

 stronger in iMr. Piatt's gardens than in his houses. The Italian 

 garden is formal and structural. It is, so to speak, an extension 

 and continuation of the house; and the structural garden, in 



intimate connection with the American country home, was, in 

 some degree, really a new thing. Mr. Piatt was a pioneer. It 

 was the peculiar good fortune of the movement that it had for a 

 leader one who "saw his problem steadily and saw it whole"; 

 who was subtle but restrained, creative but controlled, sincere 

 but of unvariable good taste; who always sought fitness and right 

 relation, and achieved distinction of result through perfection 

 of style. It was fortunate that the Italian ideal was brought to 

 us, not by an impetuous fanatic for the beauty of another age 

 and time, but by one who was also a lover of " nature's clean and 

 fragrant paths"; who had his own vision of beauty and followed 

 it; who never tied himself to a formula, and could use the edge 

 of a forest or the wandering sweetness of an old fashioned flower- 

 garden — when it suited his purpose — as easily as a clipped hedge 

 or marble basin. 



A third article, shortly to follow, will deal with the relatively small house 

 and garden as exemplified in some of the work of Charles Barton Keene 



