FITLY FURNISHING THE EVERYDAY GARDEN 
RUTH DEAN 
Landscape Architect 
Selecting Furnishings in Keeping with the Spirit of the Garden Plan 
Whether Old World, Colonial, or Modern American—Placing Seats 
and Sun-dials, Arbors and Arches Where They Really Belong 
B HAT would you do with Fiuripides and the rose arch 
and the circular white seat that Aunt Ellen gave us?” 
said my wistful new client who was having her first 
garden. A succession of gardens had taught Aunt 
Ellen many of the gardener’s pitfalls but it had failed to over¬ 
come her native thriftiness and she had passed on to a bewildered 
niece the outgrown garden furniture she could not quite persuade 
herself to throw away. “Well,” I hedged, “this plan doesn’t 
provide any place for so large a seat, but 1 will try to find the 
right spot for it, and the rose arch could perhaps go in the vege¬ 
table garden, and Euripides at the end of the long path.” 
Vanishing was the primness which was to have been the keynote 
of the garden, vanishing at the very 
threshold under the clumsy arch that 
threatened to displace the slender one 
designed to go with the house. Could 
I summon up the courage to tell her 
that Euripides must find a home in her 
neighbor’s Italian garden 
down the road, that there 
was nothing at all to do 
with the “extra size” arch 
and ponderous seat but to 
burn them? 
Not all garden furniture 
finds unsuitable surround¬ 
ings by the gift method; 
deliberate purchase is re¬ 
sponsible for just as many 
inappropriate combina¬ 
tions, partly because of the 
difficulty of obtaining good 
garden furniture ready 
made, and partly because 
the accessories of the gar¬ 
den have not been thought 
out, placed on a plan, de¬ 
signed and selected at the 
time the garden itself was 
being designed. 
A seat that is put in 
because something must 
go at the end of a path, an 
arch because the president 
of the garden club has 
such a pretty arch in her 
garden, an arbor without 
regard to the fact that it 
leads to no place in parti¬ 
cular, may be only jarring 
notes in a generally good 
garden, but the chances are they will 
be important enough to throw the 
whole garden out of key. 
Seats for Comfort and for Pleasant 
Composition 
T HE placing of a seat (to take the 
first example) is not to be thought¬ 
lessly disposed of; a frequent and un¬ 
fortunate position is on the central axis of the piazza where it is 
apt to be the most important feature of the garden, roofed over 
by an arbor, forming the semicircular head of the garden backed 
up by a wall, or otherwise elaborated. Now, of all the resting 
places under the sun, I can imagine none less interestingthanthis, 
where one is compelled to gaze back at another sitting-place 
from which one has just come. A little ingenuity will devise a 
fitting terminus for the principal axis of the garden, and the 
seat can go off in a partially secluded place to one side, from 
which something more interesting is to be seen than the direct 
elevation of the piazza. 
At the end of a straight path is another usual place for a seat, 
a location that is sometimes bad, par¬ 
ticularly if, again, the path is not on 
direct axis with the house. There is 
something unpleasantly compelling 
about so obviously placed a seat, and 
the natural impulse is to turn away 
from it, to find a more 
secluded place to sit. A 
quiet spot under a shadow¬ 
ing tree, an opening in a 
tangle of shrubbery where 
the birds chatter and sing, 
a point whence there is a 
vista through garden flow¬ 
ers, to a piece of lawn be¬ 
yond, or a vantage point 
for a view, are the most 
inviting places in which to 
come upon a garden seat. 
In placing a bench under 
a tree a mistake to be 
avoided is centering the 
bench on the tree. The 
criss-cross formed by the 
horizontal line of the 
bench and the center ver¬ 
tical line of the tree makes 
a bad composition. The 
bench will be ever so much 
more pleasing placed to 
one side of the tree, where 
the tree frames and shades 
it and where the trunk of 
the tree is not unpleas¬ 
antly cut off by the bench. 
Center a long path on a 
fine old tree if you wish 
but place the bench to one 
side—out of the vista. 
The frequency with which a seat is 
placed at the end of a path, is due, 1 
think, to a feeling that the vista formed 
by the path must be terminated. This 
is a tradition for which the Italian 
school is responsible. The skeleton of 
the Italian garden is formed by long, 
straight paths, crossed and re-crossed 
by other paths, and its keynote the 
MIRRORED LIGHT AND SHADE 
“A pool is pleasanter with some shadows 
on it” as here in the garden of Mrs. 
Henry Parmellee at Norfolk, Connecti¬ 
cut. Marian Coffin, Landscape Architect 
271 
