August, 19 10 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



317 



Furniture for the Home 



By Esther Singleton 



Garden Furniture 



ORTUNATE is he who looks out from his 

 terrace with its mossy parapet, where the 

 peacock perchance shakes out its purple 

 glories to such a world of his own. Roses 

 are clustering on the wall, or flinging out 

 their fragrance below in the sun, mingled 

 with the rare perfume of the aromatic 

 azalea. Along the edge of the lawn, his flower-border is 

 gorgeous with the queenly lily, the dark-blue monk's-hood, 

 the tall hollyhock, the spiked veronica, the red lychnis, ra- 

 diant phloxes, proud peonies, the tall spires of foxgloves 

 and larkspurs, and a multitude of fair denizens of the par- 

 terre. Richness characterizes the whole, and the sentinel 

 yews, the hedges and box edgings are there to give order 

 and distinction with the right degree of formality that be- 

 longs to the structure that is adorned. The mural sun-dial, 

 the splashing fountain, the sheltered arbor and the fragrant 

 pergola, all have their places in such a garden. Nor need 

 the landscape and the woodland with the lake be con- 

 temned. These lie outside the enclosed gardens, and all 

 are beautiful and entrancing in their degree and place. The 

 final fact is simple, after all, and the gardener must make 

 it his own. It is that the house and the garden are the two 



parts of a single whole, and happy is he who can best 

 interpret their sweet relationship." 



This description from the pen of a modern writer seems 

 to have gathered into a nutshell all the salient points of the 

 decorative, yet homelike garden, where form, color, scent 

 and sound produce a soothing, though inspiring, effect upon 

 the senses and the mind. A garden should be, in fact, a re- 

 treat, a place where one loves to linger, to rest, to read, or 

 to work. 



A garden, according to the opinion of an old authority, 

 "ought to lie to the best parts of the home, or to those of 

 the master's commonest use; so as to be but like one of the 

 rooms out of which you step into another." 



A garden is really a sort of grassy "withdrawing room." 

 "In the garden drawing-room all the furniture is 

 grown. The carpet, indeed, is swept, but it springs itself 

 out of the floor which it covers. Then, too, if it should 

 become anywise worn, we have only to leave it alone and 

 the patches mend themselves. The curtains, moreover, of 

 the garden room (in the shape of variegated surrounding 

 greenery) do not wear out, and they see to their own spring 

 cleaning or renewal. It is true that you cannot indulge a 

 restless caprice in a frequent shifting about of ornaments 



Fig. I — A simple garden provided with old hickory furniture 



