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THE GARDEN 
INDOORS AND OUT 
EDITORIAL FOREWORD 
G ARDENING as a conscious, organized movement is still — comparatively, 
at least — in its infancy; for this reason we are perhaps more keenly aware 
than ever before of the strength and scope of its influence. More, too, than 
ever before do we need in our whirring, crowded existences the refreshment of 
spirit which the garden bestows; and, aware of this need, we are in our business- 
like, modern fashion deliberately setting out to supply the demand. Hence the lightning popularity of solarium and sleeping-porch ; the 
frenzied building of rock gardens, naturalesque pools, and perennial borders; the outcry for planting the city backyard. All these are 
expressions of the healthy human delight in growing things, and as such deserve every encouragement. The terms of expression are 
negligible; whether the perennial border and the rock garden are merely fads or something more fundamental that have come to stay, 
does not matter at all; what does matter is that men and women everywhere are finding it worth while to cultivate the friendship of the 
garden. 
In all sorts of unobtrusive ways the garden colors our lives. Quietly it has stepped from outdoors in, gradually taking possession of 
our homes till now we find its bright finger-prints everywhere — in chintzes and gaily flowered wallpapers; in floor coverings, whether 
Chinese or Colonial; in window boxes cheerily ablossom upstairs and down; in the feathery ferns and trailing greenery of braziers. And, 
like all really vital conquests, this conquest of the house by the garden has been pervasive rather than aggressive in character, evolution- 
ary rather than revolutionary in method. 
The household gods have nearly always been garden gods as well — the pottery, tapestry, and rugs of centuries back testify to this. 
All sorts of floral motifs are rooted in the misty, very early days, and it is interesting to follow their development, transformation — often- 
times transfiguration — at the hands of different peoples in their passage through the ages. Some have reached us quite unchanged, 
others display immense variation, and each nation and each generation has, of course, added something to the total of such decorative 
motifs until our present choice seems almost limitless. 
In response to the interest nowadays of so many people in everything which offers beauty and wholesome living, this series — “ The 
Garden Indoors and Out” — has been prepared; and the quality of their work, already well known, makes the tribute of these decorators 
and landscapists to the gospel of gardening indisputably convincing. 
“ In The City Garden,” the final article of this series will appear in August and will include a list, supplied by well known land- 
scape architects, of plant materials which have been successfully grown in actual city gardens. 
III.— IN THE COUNTRY GARDEN 
RUTH DEAN 
Landscape Architect 
M HY put a player’s green on a one acre lot in a city 
suburb? This is a question the Easterner is apt to 
ask upon first sight of some of the garden plans of Mr. 
Jens Jensen, Chicago’s forceful and imaginative land- 
scape architect. Mr. Jensen’s replies are serene, for he has tried 
out his ideas and seen them work, and he knows that if you 
provide the means to spontaneous self-expression, children at 
least, and, to a surprising extent, sophisticated grown-ups will 
use them. The skeptical Easterner needs convincing, for he has 
been brought up to believe that art and romance have passed 
Chicago by; atany rate it will not do to be led into anyuncautious 
enthusiasm about camp-fires and player’s greens and council 
hills, without seeing them in action — they might turn out to be 
mere freakish innovations. Mr. Jensen is not averse to furnish- 
ing proof — he invites you to go out to his own place at Ravinia, 
or arranges to have you visit the gardens of his clients, and the 
result is such as to convert you completely. 
On a frosty evening in September 1 made my first trip of 
investigation, and I had stipulated that there was to be no 
specially staged performance, nor in fact any previous warning 
of our visit. It was late dusk when we arrived and from the 
piazza I caught a glimpse of leaping flames down a long, dark 
alley of Cedars— following this path to its end we came upon 
a circle of family and friends gathered about the outdoor 
equivalent of a living room fire-place — a round, stone-lined, 
shallow hole in the ground, with as merry a fire as ever 
crackled, burning ia it. That fire under the stars, was a 
strange mixture of influences; it had its purely spiritual mo- 
ments; but, on the other hand, its bright red flames went so far 
as to inspire a staid Chicago business man to do a mock savage 
dance, with his fifteen year old daughter beating a pan for a 
tom-tom. The dance made no pretensions to a Broadway 
standard — the important point about the performance was 
that conventional folk lost their self-consciousness, and for an 
hour or two played like children. 
Mr. Jensen has discovered to any number of people their own 
possibilities for simple self-expression, and the enjoyment to 
be had from it. One may make an innocent game of charades 
into a beautiful impromptu pageant, given an outdoor setting, 
— a semi-circle of green, with a background of dark evergreens 
behind it; and when this semi-circle is beyond a pool and 
slightly higher, with wavering flambeaux (boxes of torchlight 
powder) reflected in the water, there are no heights of poetry to 
which average human beings may not rise. 
The open air theatre, of course, is not a new thing; we have 
had for a number of years at some of our colleges and on a few 
private places, scattered outdoor theatres, at which occasional 
performances have been given, with more or less formal 
audiences. But it is the game in which everyone can take 
part that is fun. We want not merely to read about garden 
parties, wishing vaguely that it were possible to eat out-of- 
doors, and to go with great difficulty once a summer to see 
professional talent give an elaborately prepared play — we want 
to make it so easy to have tea under the Apple tree, to act or 
dance, or play on our own lawns that we will get out of the 
habit of spending heavy summer evenings on the piazza con- 
versing about the heat. 
T AKE the question of eating out-of-doors. The plainest 
meal becomes a bit of a feast, if it is spread under the grape 
arbor, but this is a festivity so easily had that few but our 
children and “foreigners” perceive it. Mr. Thomas A. Janvier 
in his book on old New York, speaks of coming into a French 
settlement on West 21st Street and beholding a “gay Gallic 
company breakfasting under its own vine and ailanthus tree 
with such honest light-heartedness as can be manifested only by 
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