August, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



29 1 



Concrete Garden Benches of Graceful Design Follow the Outline of the Curved Path 



Cement and Concrete in the Formal Garden 



By Phebe Westcott Humphreys 



[EMENT casting and concrete construction, 

 from being mere curiosities, have gradually 

 become familiar necessities in the formal 

 American gardens of to-day. For the ce- 

 ment castings various experiments have been 

 made to render the material durable and to 

 give it a certain hint of color for garden 

 urns and vases for balustrades. As the majority of the sands 

 that are mixed with the cement have not sufficient color in 

 themselves to effect it, "mortar-color" is frequently added. 

 But in the concrete used for outlining and walling formal gar- 

 dens, providing coping for fountains and substantial garden- 

 benches of graceful design, no attempt at coloring is made; 

 the gray and bluish tones of the natural mixture having 

 proved entirely satisfactory in the formal-garden designs 



without the addition of coloring-pigments of any sort. 



Garden-decorators from across the water tell us that "in 

 the land of its invention, Portland cement is now used for 

 whole buildings, monuments, sea-walls, fountains and 

 bridges. Kilometre posts measuring roads on the Continent 

 exhibit the material which went into the highway itself. In 

 France and England it is employed so cleverly at artificial- 

 rock gardening as to call forth admiration of the thing 

 imitated." In America the uses of cement are daily extend- 

 ing in the building of bridges and houses, and seemingly In 

 every form of constructive work on a large scale; and it is 

 difficult to say how much more rapidly it would extend in 

 completing decorative garden features, if satisfactory varia- 

 tions in texture and color were practicable without impair- 

 ing cohesiveness and consequent strength. 



Mammoth Garden Urns 



A Corner of the Sunken Garden 



