Walls In and About the Garden -w. h. butterfield, s- 
WHAT THE WALL DOES IN UNIFYING THE HOUSE AND THE GARDEN— HARMONT OF MATERIALS AND THEIR 
PROPER SELECTION- -BUILDING DRY WALLS FROM THE GARDEN VIEWPOINT 
The wall adds a distinct charm to this particular garden. It helps to emphasize the point of 
entrance and unifies the picture 
N ATL'RE’S lines are ever shifting, 
ever restless. Nature's colors are 
ever mingling, ever changing, 
while her forms, unfi.\ed, vagrant, 
mould themselves from year to year into 
new shapes and sizes. All is transient. 
Nowhere is this more apparent to us than in 
the garden, for here we live and labor, work 
with our hands; training and cultivating Na- 
ture’s children in our endeavor to them to 
our scheme. We are in such intimate rela- 
tionship with them that their minutest 
changes are visible or felt by us. If we neg- 
lect them, leave them for a time, we scarcely 
know them upon our return. They become 
wayward even as our own children without 
our guiding care. 
Into this riot of glad living we introduce 
artificial forms to curb, confine or correct. 
There are walks, paths, pergolas or what not 
that keep their forms and, while cooperating 
with Nature in her beauty making, serve 
their useful parts as well. The paths are 
walked upon and lead us from the house 
to all the glories of the garden. The walls, 
with their mellow, solid surfaces, hold the 
earth from our lower levels or thrust back 
the more savage plants who would ruth- 
lessly rush upon our little family. At high 
noon, sitting under the pergola we thank 
it for throwing off the sun’s hot rays and 
letting through the faintest breezes. 
.As in all art the beautiful combines with 
the useful, so in our garden, the features 
we introduce, if serving a definite purpose, 
are for this, all the more 
beautiful. 
There is hardly a garden 
where a wall, in one form or 
another, is not necessary and 
by its presence adding charm. 
It may be of stone, brick or 
concrete, the choice thereof 
depending on our house ma- 
terial, procurability or use, 
which is to say the place the 
wall is to occupy and the 
service it is to perform. Then 
there is always the question of- color and 
te.xture, for the differences between the 
three materials are marked for both qual- 
ities. 
The skillful combining of a garden wall 
with the house ;s rare. The proportioning 
of the wall’s height with the adjacent 
level surfaces, so well studied in Italy’s 
gardens, often escapes our notice. If it is 
true that all art is a matter of arrangement, 
how doubly true is this in the garden. 
There is, first of all, the arrangement of 
the house with the garden. We have seen 
how doorways, roofs and porches link the 
two ; we have yet walls. 
Nowhere will better examples be found 
than in Italy for it is truly there that the 
house is in the garden. One might nat- 
urally say: “ Why mine is to be but a simple 
old-fashioned garden. What have the great 
gardens of Italy with their many features 
to do with mine?” Just so, but it is not 
the bosc/ii, the giardini segreti nor the tapis 
verts that we are to study so much as the 
subtle linking of these features, the scheme 
of arranging them whether it be the placing 
of the pavement stones around a fountain 
or the meeting of the wall and house. 
Surely the same principles apply in study- 
ing your modest flight of rough steps as did 
they at Caprarola with all its wondrous 
Canephorae. Ah, there are so many 
wonderfully delightful things in a garden 
that one is apt to ramble off from one’s 
subject and follow some enchanting path or 
“ — linger by the fountain’s spray 
With .Aucassin and Xicolette.” 
It is essential that where the walls meet 
the house there should be a material in 
common. The stone, brick or concrete 
whether it be in the main house or founda- 
tions above grade should continue on in the 
wall. This is the prime and first rule but 
like all good rules may be broken, that is 
by one who knotvs how. Nevertheless it is 
always a safe one to follow. There may be 
a change of form in the house or wall at the 
meeting point as is frequently done in 
England where a low sw'eep of a roof nearly 
touches the wall’s top. Also the wall may 
butt directly into the house or rather 
against it and bind itself thereto by ‘a string 
course or other architectural member as 
occurs so often in the Italian villas. In the 
English garden one does not “feel” the 
hand of the architect as in Italy. There 
you know at first glance that the whole 
garden and casino, were designed as much 
together as the roof was designed with the 
rest of the building. This is not to say 
that English designers neglect the garden 
when studying the house. Far from it. 
Nowhere in the wide w'orld do we find the 
smaller country place so charmingly fitted 
to its garden or the latter so inviting and so 
everlastingly livable. It is simply because 
it is a smaller place, which is to say smaller 
in pretension, not size, that it is less “geo- 
metrical.” 
Stonew'ork is so varied, is capable of so 
many forms of construction, 
shape and gradation of color 
that it lends itself most e.\- 
cellently to the garden. It 
is often difficult to choose 
what you want. There i.s 
the roughest sort of a wall 
for the roughest sort of a 
garden and for the most in- 
formal house. There are 
dry stone walls and walls 
laid up with mortar to say 
nothing of the cut stone with 
A simple, plain brick retaining wall will often do away with the necessity of a terrace and 
so economizes room 
Combinations of various materials are always interesting. Here are wood, brick and 
stone elTectively used together 
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