House & Garden 
these, making a background tor them, can be 
seen in the plan, drawn to scale, and repro¬ 
duced on page 13. For the sake of clearness 
the different massing of the flowers was not 
shown in the diagram, but the general view on 
page t 6 will give a 
true idea of this as 
it was last season. 
Year by year the 
fickleannuals play a 
merry dance around 
the perennials, and 
clumps of rapid 
growth, which mark 
a certain bed in 
July, soon are gone 
to rise elsewhere 
and change the tace 
of another bed the 
coming year. Like 
light-hearted 
truants, phlox, peo¬ 
nies, asters, sweet 
peas, sunflowers 
and petunias have 
escaped from the 
hand which first 
planted the garden 
and spend summer 
days in boisterous 
revel before silent 
ferns, dark laurel 
and prim yews. 
The charitable 
arms of an old creeper shelter the blossoming 
upstart of a week. The difference between the 
bright parterres and the sombre planting of 
the narrow terrace is such a contrast as that of 
field and wood or sun and shade. And this 
one bank of dark and shade is necessary to the 
garden from the point of view of its design as 
well as its growth and its pleasantness. With¬ 
out it, the open expanse of sunlight and color 
would soon tire the eye as surely as it would 
aggravate bodily discomfort in summer, and 
in winter the forlorn blank left by the flowers 
would depress the mind. 
If it be believed that “In every Garden 
Four Things are necessary to be provided 
for, Flowers, Fruit, 
Shade and Water,” 
—so wrote Sir 
William Temple 
from Moor Park 
toward the close of 
the seventeenth 
century, — his 
further claim that 
“ whoever lays out 
a Garden without 
all these, must not 
pretend it in any 
Perfection ” is not 
always justified. 
Avonwood Court 
lacks two of these; 
it has but little of a 
third : yet it defies 
old Sir William’s 
declaration in that 
it perfectly fulfils its 
mission of height¬ 
ening thesurround- 
ings of a country 
home. A garden 
that is a pleasing 
ornamenttoa house 
is sufficient unto 
itself where there is no need of raising fruits 
to feebly compete with the green grocer who 
calls daily at the kitchen door. American 
suburbs supply everything for bodily comfort 
and what they lack—which is often beauty— 
it is the part of gardens to supply. So Avon- 
wood Court has neither fruits nor kitchen 
simples; and that it is as beautiful as we find it 
to be, without the aid of water in any form, is 
its most striking and interesting characteristic. 
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