NOT BY PLANTS ALONE 
ARE GARDENS MADE 
GEORGE WILLIAM BEATTY 
Landscape Architect 
Furnishing the Garden for Comfort and Convenience 
Materials for Walks and Walls, Terraces and Teahouses 
ITH the best will in the world we really do not remem- 
k er f rom season to season the defects of our gardens— 
DlpfTa we forget them just as we forget the shortcomings of 
people we’re fond of when they are off on their travels. 
It is the intimacies of daily living that reveal lacks and create a 
desire for remedy. Spring is rather like a yearly home-coming, 
joyous and long-deferred, and we are too busy greeting ecstatic 
little Crocuses, answering the cheery salutations of Daffodils 
and gay, signalling Tulips to be aware of the garden as a whole. 
Not until June does she settle down, as it were, in her green 
mantle and give us a chance to study her contours. 
In June we not only work outdoors; we begin also to meditate 
—we wish we had a seat in that pleasant corner and we notice 
that the path has a meaningless sort of meander that drains it of 
character and makes it look like a bewildered sleep-walker. 
We arrive at the disturbing conclusion that no amount of ver¬ 
dure and bloom can wholly conceal initial weaknesses of plan any 
more than a beautiful velvet can hide a graceless figure; but the 
owner of the garden, unlike the owner of a figure, is fortunate in 
being able to re-model the skeleton to a satisfying shapeliness. 
Curiously enough, despite all that has been said and read 
about living in the garden, comparatively few gardens are ac¬ 
tually livable and few people give serious thought to making 
them comfortable and convenient; yet for four months at least, 
and generally for six or eight, or even the full twelve, they have 
so much more to offer than the walls of a room! Of course, you 
want easy chairs, and a bench or swing for napping, tables at 
which to eat and work, a terrace to keep your feet dry, a sunny 
A SEAT WHICH INVITES 
“ For comfort a seat must be placed 
in shade and seclusion and always 
at the end of a walk or vista or 
some place where it has a meaning,” 
as here in Mrs. Dudley L. Pick- 
man’s garden at Beverly, Mass. 
275 
