312 
The Garden Magazine, July, 1921 
Dahlias with Lady Hillingdon Roses at their feet, and black- 
purple Petunias flapping ragged trumpets on the ground below 
the Roses. Down at the end of the garden are seats under an 
arbor, where one gets a backward look over the whole, or a 
view in the opposite direction to low sand dunes covered with 
Bayberry, Cedar, and Sumach. It is a very livable garden — this 
lavender, purple, white, and salmon-flowered place surrounded 
by gray walls, and except for sleeping purposes and occasional 
rains the house seems entirely superfluous. 
I NDEED, what can one not do more pleasurably out-of- 
doors than in? A book is twice as entertaining read in the 
garden, conversation twice as sprightly and the mending one 
half as arduous. But reading and sewing in the garden require 
comfortable garden furniture, furniture that may stay out-of- 
doors indefinitely where it can always be found when it is 
wanted; furniture that does not have to be brought from 
indoors on each occasion of its use. Well-designed garden 
furniture is hard to procure, and the architect who cares about 
these details finds himself driven to designing his own benches 
and tables, and having them made to order, unless the garden 
be of a kind in which the classic marble bench is appropriate, or 
in which green painted iron furniture is not out of place. Stone 
or marble benches and tables may be found, beautifully designed 
and well executed; this is true in lesser degree of iron furniture, 
but stock, wooden furniture seems to be available only in heavy, 
uninteresting designs. The kindness of Nature mitigates 
somewhat their ugliness, but they are always offensive to the 
appreciative eye, and it will not be long before an enterprising 
manufacturer with a feeling for fitness, will realize this, and 
replace the square, white-painted, often grotesque objects 
which now clutter our gardens, with well-designed settles 
and tables that follow some other style than the clumsy “mis- 
sion” type. 
Meantime good things may be had if one is willing to take 
the trouble to get them, and without greater cost than the ? 
poor ones. In cities, at least one manufacturer can always be 1 
found who will make special designs, and a country carpenter, ' 
given a picture of a refectory table, or of an English settle (for 
alas, the English have attended to this feature of garden work 3 
as well as to most others, better than we!) can usually produce ’ 
a very interesting piece of furniture. A practical point worth lf 
considering is to so construct the table tops and bench seats as to 1 
allow rain water to run away easily— the simplest method being , e 
to use wide pieces of wood with small cracks between, or in the i s 
case of benches a slat construction. 
The old benches which were often to be found on sunny L 
side porches of colonial houses may well serve as models for 
modern work. These were sometimes stenciled, sometimes ‘ 
painted green or red. A stenciled design would soon be lost, of : 
course, from exposure to the elements, so that plain painting is 1 
best for garden service. Oak or teak-wood left unfinished will 
weather beautifully, but most other woods require to be painted 
or stained. So, too, does wicker or reed furniture that is to be 
left out in the open. The variety of choice in this kind of furn- 
iture is wide, and if carefully varnished or painted each season, 
it will stand a great deal of exposure. 
Although a digression into the field of garden furniture is 
perhaps not strictly to the point in such an article, every 
detail which contributes toward making the garden livable is 
more or less relevant to the subject. The things one does are 
always bound up with the way one does them; and if living in 
the garden remains difficult and unattractive, we will continue to 
look at it from the comfortable vantage point of the piazza, and 
it will remain a mere accessory of the house, to be exhibited as a i 
possession or regarded as a part of the view. But until most of 
us have been enticed away from our sheltering roofs, and in- 
duced to discover the garden’s everyday uses, its greatest 
satisfaction and most varied delights will continue undiscovered 
secrets. 
SPEAKING OF WINTER 
ADOLPH KRUHM 
brings the ideal as well as the eleventh-hour op- 
portunity to provide more vegetables of the kind that 
will keep the human body in good order during the 
winter months. Even if you do go away some time 
during July, perhaps not to return until late in August, by all 
means either sow at once some of the vegetables suggested 
or arrange with your gardener to have it done during your 
absence. None of those suggested is difficult to grow, so that 
the work may be safely left even to an unskilled laborer. 
In analyzing vegetables according to their relative merit, 
as sources of vitamine or as roughage, both essential elements in 
nutrition without which the human engine will not function 
properly, I find it difficult in some cases to draw a strict line. 
Thus, Cabbage, eaten raw in the form of cold slaw, brings to the 
body a remarkable amount of anti-scorbutic vitamine, which 
is apt to be entirely lost in the process of boiling. Kale, 
which is a member of the Cabbage family, constitutes 
roughage entirely, since it is never eaten in the green stage; 
and yet there is no question but that it also furnishes a 
certain amount of water-soluble vitamine, chiefly because 
it remains practically a fresh vegetable throughout the 
winter and may be left growing on its hardy stalk until 
a few hours before it is cooked. Again Spinach, one of 
the richest of all vitamine carriers, next to Tomatoes — con- 
tains such large amounts of that element that considerable 
quantities remain in it even after cooking; while Tomatoes 
lose none of the vitamines whatever the mode of table pre- 
paration. 
In connection with the root crops, 1 am indebted to Professor 
Osborne, of New Haven, Connecticut, for the information that, 
according to their relative vitamine-carrying qualities, Turnips 
rank first, Carrots second, and Beets last. Since Kohlrabi and 
