Feb. 1907.] 



101 



HORTICULTURE. 



GARDEN ACCESSORIES: THEIR POSSIBILITIES IN COUNTRY 

 AND CITY" GARDENS. 

 It gives me pleasure to meet you to-day for the purpose of discussing 

 with you some features of ornamental gardening, such as fountains, pools, pergolas, 

 arbors, trellises, bowers, terraces, walls, balustrades, summer-houses, or garden- 

 houses, benches, urns, tables, and figures. You will pardon me if I take advantage 

 of the chance the stereoptican offers me to monopolize most of the discussion. 

 While treating with garden accessories^ I wish to point out the opportunity for 

 their use in city-yard-gardens ; such little formal gardens as might easily be made 

 out of the typical unsightly back-yard ; but I will first speak of these features in 

 connection with the ornamentation of larger gardens. When I was asked by the 

 lecture committee to give a talk on this subject of garden accessories, or garden 

 ornaments, or garden furniture, as you may choose to call it, I thought it would 

 be more interesting and more instructive to treat the subject in a general way 

 rather than to talk about each particular style of garden ornament by itself; 

 for the reason that the successful use of these features in a garden or on the 

 grounds of a country place must depend not only upon the design of the access- 

 ories themselves but upon the position? they occupy. The most beautiful arbor, 

 pergola, summer-house, or fountain may look ugly if it is not appropriately placed 

 so as to appear in keeping with its surroundings. The introduction of such garden 

 accessories as these together with terraces, pools, walls, sundials, tables, and the 

 like has been made possible by the ever increasing use of our gardens and home 

 grounds as out-of-door living rooms. 



The great wave of " garden magic " that is sweeping over us and is being 

 so enthusiastically encouraged by many magazines and writers of to-day is awaken- 

 ing in us the fact that we ought to make more use of our gardens apart from the 

 pleasure of gathering and caring for flowers ; and we ought to make them look 

 attractive by the introduction of features that will give charm when there are 

 no flowers in bloom, as is always the case in this climate six or seven months out 

 of the year. There is more to gardening than the mere raising of flowers. If any 

 person does not think so he had much better raise his flowers as he would vegetables, 

 in simple beds by themselves, rather than make a feeble attempt to dress up his 

 grounds with fantastically arranged flower beds. And this same principle holds 

 true in regard to the employment of garden accessories. Better make no attempt 

 to use them at all, if it cannot be done more artistically than we sometimes see 

 in some country places which have been absolutely ruined by spotting them with 

 hideous statues and flimsy iron fountains and the like ; but such cases are com- 

 paratively rare. 



One of the most useful of garden accessories and one that looks appropriate 

 in almost any garden is a summer-house, or garden-house, or exedra, as it some- 

 times called in Italian gardens. No matter whether your garden is large or small, 

 formal or naturalistic, there is generally a cosy spot where a summer-house would 

 fit nicely. The intense heat of our summer sun in New England almost necessitates 

 such a shady retreat where one may sit and enjoy the beauty of the surroundings. 

 I daresay all of you can recall many gardens beautiful enough in themselves but 

 decidedly unliveable because of this hot sun. 



The summer-house need not be a pretentious affair unless the grounds around 

 it are rigidly formal. Some of the most charming ones are made of red cedar with 

 the bark left on, or of rough oak, roofed with stout beams and thatched with straw 



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