The ever-recurring couch-grass lawns, and the neatly trimmed hedges 
which are gradually attaining to the height of a lamp post, pall 
on the passer-by, and they also display a lack of thought or interest 
in not devising something more varied. It is pleasanter to look at a 
garden where one ('an throw down a match, or where children can 
play, without causing disfigurement. The drawing-room carpet out 
of doors is neither comfortable nor homely. Houses not being asy- 
lums or gaols, there is no necessity for enclosing them with high 
hedges winch hold the diet off the road and check the breeze, unless 
to hide the bed neatly arranged alongside the front door outside the 
drawing room window — an arrangement entailed by bad planning. 
Peop.e might remember that there are other hedge shrubs besides 
macrocarpia, pittosporum, plumbago, and box. The. macrocarpia or 
pittosporum hedges and the green patch in front of the house have 
been done to death in Perth, and a change is required. In many 
cases the absence of a hedge or fence would be a distinct improve- 
ment. 
Turning our thoughts to the style of bouse most suitable for a 
suburb, we fnd tie cottage type prevails, and rightly so, as it is 
simple and economical, and it can be made as pleasing as desired. 
Now that the garden city idea has begun to be applied to the devel- 
opment of suburban estates, there will be less crowding, larger gar- 
dens, more open spaces, and houses grouped with regard to archi- 
tectural effect. Aspect and vista, and greater freedom of design, 
can then be considered. “Houses are built to live in, and not to 
look on, ’ said Francis Bacon, but fortunately this aphorism was not 
accepted in bis day, nor should it be in ours. Too often the exterior 
of the house seems to be designed to suil the street or road, with a 
pretentious front, defaced by superfluous and meritricious ornamen- 
tation whilst the sides are plain and rough, and the back mean and 
squalid. A house should suggest refinement, repose, and individ- 
uality, and present an honest face to every quarter. What is more 
vulgar than a bouse with the brick front’ painted with hideous so- 
called tuckpointing, and the adjacent sides of plain bad brickwork, 
or a boarded wall imitating stone blocks? In Adelaide I saw a bouse 
with stamped zinc imitation stone weather-boards in front and cor- 
rugated iron on the side walls! There is more sham an I shoddy 
woik about many of the modern bouses than in those of years ago. 
the obi red brick pensioner's houses present an air of honest re- 
srectahihtv entirely lacking in hundreds of more recent erections. 
Design with beauty; build in truth” is the motto of the London 
Architectural Association. Let 11s avoid shams both in construction 
and m materials. 
The controlling factor in the design of any building is the idan. 
11 w ‘‘ Imve ideals of home life, and correspondingly higher 
and more complex requirements in planning, these must have the 
most important effect on the exterior— on the style of the design. 
