464 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1908 



December, rgo8 



Beneath the dining-room windows, next the garden porch, 

 is a wide and spacious border, reaching quite out to the 

 bounding path. Here are row after row of hardy shrubs 

 and flowering annuals; an inner row of nicotiana is fol- 

 lowed by a low hemlock hedge; then another row of nico- 

 tiana; then Japanese barbery; then nicotiana again, and 

 a final luscious growth of heliotrope. The corresponding 

 border beneath the drawing-room windows is chiefly com- 

 posed of day lilies and hardy phlox, harmonizing with the 

 old rose tones of the bricks. 



But it is the path bordering that seizes the attention and 



most it would be a florist's catalogue, and would convey no 

 sense at all of this planted loveliness, in which so much has 

 been combined to produce so grand an effect. For there is 

 ample spacing everywhere. The beds are wide and the 

 paths are long; they twist a bit and turn some, so that an 

 end is no sooner reached than an opening presents itself with 

 new varieties and new growths. Somewhere in between this 

 beauty a vegetable garden has been contrived, but it is so 

 embedded and decorated that its more useful growths hardly 

 count in the beauty within which it is planted. 



There are few things so difficult to describe as a garden, 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



465 



may lose oneself in its floral borders; stand, as it were ir 

 the center of a great bouquet, spread out cm every side a 

 far as eye can see. You may, indeed, be the single incon 

 gruous element in the whole landscape, for what mere mar 

 dare compare himself with the loveliness of flowt 

 Not I, surely; and in truth, as my entranced ey 

 me from one mass of flowering to another, from 

 cate hue to perhaps a richer, stronger note, it < 

 though, most unworthily, I had gained entrance uu 

 land, a true and real fairyland; for the path I trod wa 

 real and solid, the trees gave back their natural resistance 



;? 



carried 

 ne deli- 



:med as 

 fairy- 



moment, if you please, imagine that there has been no system 

 displayed in its planting, no reasoning avoided in what has 

 been done here. Nor think, if you will, that there can be 

 only confusion here, plentifully distributed, displayed under 

 every tree, flourishing unabashed by every foot of walk. 



There is nothing of this at all; for how could there be 

 when the single underlying idea that determined the form 

 and content of this garden was simply to gather here every 

 beautiful kind of plant, every plant that had beauty or 

 helped beauty, or that gave forth a delicious perfume, or 

 which had some exquisite or some noble form— if I say all 



holds it. The paths out beyond the house are bordered on 

 both sides by wide beds filled with flowers of the most bril- 

 liant sort. One may almost believe that everything that 

 grows and blooms has its place here, and certainly every 

 plant is at home, for the growth is everywhere lusty and the 

 blooming continuous and vigorous throughout the season. 

 Here are huge beds of verbenas; immense clumps of gay pe- 

 tunias, each color in a place of its own; some immensely high 

 lilies; brakes of fern; clumps of hardy phlox; brilliant as- 

 ters; more nicotiana, and other splendid annuals and peren- 

 nials. In other paths the planting changes and there are 

 masses of dahlias, foxgloves, marigolds, snapdragons, chrys- 

 anthemums, salpiglossis — but why continue the list? At the 



and few gardens so untranslatable into words as Mrs Chan- 

 ter's. A recital of its contents would be a mere list of names 

 and there would be no conveyance at all of its wonderful 

 charm and beauty. It is a garden that would be lovely 

 everywhere, but which is here most lovely of all; since one 

 hardly looks for this floral wealth in the midst of a forest 

 and the rocks and trees afford so tine a shelter and so beautiful 

 an enclosure. So here it grows and flourishes, like nothing 

 but itself, a beautiful scented garden, so filled with flowers 

 that the air is saturated with their sweet odors, and one carries 

 away from it a lasting sense of its beauty and its perfume. 



Yet it is a garden to linger in as well as to delight in. Its 

 area, as I have already hinted, is sufficiently large that one 



once I put my hand upon them, and the flowers were real, 

 too, growing in endless profusion, each stem seemingly 

 capped with its own precious note of loveliness and color. 



Yes, it was all true and all real, and I had no need to 

 pinch myself or thrust a pin within my flesh to realize that 

 I was awake and really here. But, surely, fairyland could 

 not be fairer than this sweetly scented garden, nor finer nor 

 more beautiful. Even the "common" flowers, if there be 

 such things, took on an unaccustomed note of beauty and 

 seemed the better fitted to fill their part of having some- 

 thing to do and doing it with as much grace as they could. 



If I have described this garden as a place in which every 

 lovely thing grew and bloomed in profusion, do not for a 



this lay below the planting of this garden, then how could 

 it be aught but beautiful? Surely, where beauty is gathered 

 together, there is beauty, and all else matters not at all. 



And a garden being a place for plants, this is a true 

 garden. The architect has not hauled into it mammothly 

 heavy constructions of stone and cement; the sculptor has 

 not set up his statuary or his carved vases; the landscape 

 architect has not brought out his plans and instruments. I 

 doubt if any of these good folk had a "job" here or needed 

 one. Quite certainly they were not needed; for in the deli- 

 -'- lly lovely embroidery of the simple plants themselves 



s richest .adornment to her 



face, and 



it gracious offering to the human mind and senses 



