310 
The Garden Magazine, July, 1921 
Marian C. Coffin, Landscape Architect 
Fellowcrofts Photo Shop, Photo, 
A GARDEN OF 
GRACIOUS CURVES 
In such garden-building 
the circle holds its magic 
undiminished, and lures 
the stroller round and 
round to enjoy the beauty 
of Lilies and of lowlier 
things which peep out at 
one from the enframing 
border. Garden of Mrs. 
Frederick T ownsend, 
Albany, N. Y. 
French folk, eating something — eating almost anything out of 
doors.” 
But with us Americans, eating in the garden is still somewhat 
of an occasion; it requires the special preparation of a picnic, or 
a lawn social to bring us to it. True, the breakfast porch is 
coming into favor, and the sleeping porch bids fair to ruin our 
national architecture, but we have still to shake off the house 
entirely and get out from under roofs, for ordinary affairs. 
Probably the two chief deterrents are our national love of 
convenience, and our national insect! We cannot quite recon- 
cile ourselves (or our servants) to carrying the food from the 
kitchen to some spot in the garden, when the dining-room is so 
handy; and if we could overcome our inertia in this respect, we 
would still encounter the mosquito. However, it is the extra 
trouble of garden living which chiefly makes it unpopular, I am 
convinced, because, in my own practice, I have never provided 
an unroofed garden terrace as conveniently placed as the 
porch, which did not entirely supplant the latter for 
fair weather use. There is no doubt about the fact 
that as a nation we place convenience first on our list of 
requirements. 1 he kitchen must be near the dining- 
room; we will not carry the soup down a corridor through 
a butler’s pantry, across a hall, and past the “entry” 
in order to get it to the dining-room, as do the English; 
and, if we are to eat out-of-doors with the abandon 
of the French, we must have the equivalent of their 
jolly little paved courtyards just outside the kitchen, 
or at the very least, no great distance from it. 
Eating in the garden, perhaps the most fundamental 
activity, is not the only one whose pleasure the garden 
heightens. 1 once knew a Dutch gardener whose knowl- 
edge of English and still more of its pronunciation, was 
somewhat vague, but whose grasp of life’s little enjoy- 
ments was complete. His favorite generalization was: 
“A garden is a place to sit and medicate in”; and per- 
haps it was his constant iteration of this mispronounced 
homily, that taught me never to omit from a garden a 
place for sitting and “medication.” To be able to 
leave the house entirely, and sit down among the garden 
inhabitants makes it possible to share their serenity. It 
is the porch which alienates us from the garden; a rocking- 
chair on the piazza is no substitute for a bench among 
the Lilacs. 
In other countries the total absence of porches leaves 
no alternative but to step directly from the living rooms into the 
garden; consequently gardens link themselves to the houses by 
means of a terrace, or by no such intermediate step at all, and 
the intimacy between the two is complete. An interesting 
example of a connecting house and garden on Long Island is 
that of Mrs. Robert C. Hill at Easthampton. “Grey Gardens” 
was first built about thirty or forty feet away from the house 
with a little walk leading down to an entrance gate in the wall. 
But Mrs. Hill, feeling the lack of any real tie between her 
house and her garden, took out a section of the wall on the house 
side of the garden, returned the walls from a point each side of the 
opening to meet the house, and formed a wide lane to the 
garden. The strip of grass in the centre about ten feet wide, 
she bordered with broad flower beds against the return walls, 
and thus brought her garden up to the doorstep. This particu- 
lar garden hospitably provides a choice of places for the would- 
be meditator; a seat on one side is among salmon-colored 
PLAYER'S GREEN 
In Mr. Jens Jensen’s own garden at Ravinia, Illinois, is this charmingly 
secluded spot where grown-ups and children alike may play at make-believe 
