PERGOLAS. 
293 
cul de sac should be generally in some part of the garden convenient 
as an arbour. A pergola should not be placed where it is of little 
use from the practical standpoint. 
However charming it may be, and however liberal its wealth of 
flowers, it does not follow that the addition of a pergola to the larger 
garden pictures is necessarily good. It may be quite otherwise 
unless it forms part of a considered composition. If this is true in 
respect of an entirely new garden, it is clear that the addition of a 
pergola to a well-designed old garden needs very careful consideration. 
We may compare this feature in some respects to an avenue of 
trees. Like an avenue, its main effect is to emphasize a certain line, 
and where such importance is bestowed, it must be rewarded by a 
satisfactory ending. If the eyes or footsteps are conducted to a 
point of little interest one feels that effort has been wasted. The 
line should be preferably straight, although a good effect is sometimes 
obtained by a regular curve. The sides should be free from continuous 
planting, by which one does not mean flowers. The pillars should be 
considered as belonging to the pathway and forming part of it. The 
material used for the latter should therefore be carefully chosen in 
order that it may appear to bind the piers together, and so assist 
the sense of unity and repose. 
The appearance should be substantial and comfortably permanent 
in effect, but the grace of some pergolas is sometimes compromised 
by too heavy piers. Seclusion and quietness are desirable for pergolas 
intended to be used as arbours. A pergola should not unnecessarily 
monopolize the garden landscape, although it is sometimes a useful 
device for masking the poverty of an outlook. 
When a pergola is placed on the central axis of a garden view 
the garden is cut in half, and this should not be done without full 
justification. 
The effect of colonnading has an artistic value which is unique 
in architecture, and is independent of style. Partially clothed columns 
of a pergola with beams overhead bearing foliage of varying density 
lend themselves to unending experiment in perspective, and in the 
play of light and shade. These are factors of too much value to be 
left to chance. Those who derive great enjoyment in a garden by 
discovering every picture it has to offer, will always pause on the 
threshold of a well-made pergola in anticipation of the pleasing effects 
of the lights and shadows. The management of these effects is a 
difficult art, but the material with which one has to deal — the branches 
of the plants and the foliage — is amenable to discipline. 
One understands and appreciates the importance of perspective 
effects in the corridors of a house. A pergola offers opportunities of 
equal value, which, rightly used, dispose of a not uncommon suggestion 
that it is chiefly worth seeing from the outside. 
From an architectural standpoint the pergola is often very useful 
as an aid to composition and a means for giving variety in outline, 
continuity^ connexion, and other characters which it is desired to 
