486 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1910 



A touch of Japan 



American Homes and Gardens' Garden Competition 



First Garden Prize 



Won by Dr. Shiro Miyaki, St. Louis, Mo. 



NDOUBTEDLY the most beautiful scenery 

 is found where mountains and waterfalls 

 combine; for example, in Norway, Swit- 

 zerland, Japan or New Zealand; where 

 nature omitted to provide space for the 

 patent lawn mower. 



When the average man starts to create 

 a handsome spot out of his miniature estate, does he follow 

 the beautiful examples set by nature of combining in grace- 

 ful arrangement mountains and valleys, canyons and water- 

 falls, rivulets and lakes, all regulated to the size of his 

 estate? 



Only too often, the reverse, for nature may have left a 

 natural depression in the land easily converted into a pond 

 or lake, but alas, he has but one idea, the one so often 

 set before him, of leveling it off, and the more level the 

 better, to better accommodate the everlasting lawn 

 mower. 



He does not seem to realize that just in proportion as 

 his little estate becomes, through irregularities, unsuited to 

 the mower, does it develop those beautiful little variations 

 and irregularities that we always admire in nature and 

 spend our vacations to seek out. 



Lawns are invaluable and becoming more so every day; 

 they are the finest places known to man from which to 

 start the family aeroplane, graze the Jersey and for pos- 



sibly some other purposes. Shall we continue to make our 

 gardens such that a view taken from any one of the four 

 corners gives the same view, only varied by the varying 

 angle at which the individual grass blades are seen, with 

 a round geranium bed in the painfully exact mathematical 

 center of the enclosure, embellished if one will by a straight 

 hedge on all sides, or shall we receive new inspiration from 

 nature. 



Should this be too radical and we still must have some- 

 thing round, let us forget to use a string to make it so, 

 fail to center it exactly and change it to a puddle of water 

 with aquatic plants and gold fish for variation., 



Build an elevation, a hill or a mountain for a seat or a 

 tea-house to command a view of lakes and valleys below. 

 Build it on and over the ash pit. 



What! The ash pit? Who ever heard of such an 

 idea? r'j§^ 



Not a bad idea nevertheless, for do we not want the 

 ash pit hidden and will not a mountain with rocks, vines, 

 trees and shrubbery faced perhaps by a canyon and water- 

 fall most certainly do it? 



An angel might alight on such a mountain and be un- 

 conscious of what was lurking beneath. 



If water "should" leak from the canyon high up on the 

 mountain and fall many feet on to a selected rock that 

 nature has taken centuries to concave and from there to 



