House & Garden 
A TERRACE AT MELCHET COURT, ENGLAND 
If it is desired to have flowers conjoined to the mansion , the space between it and the terrace 
balustrade is the proper locality. Animals and pere?inials should never be used in this vicinity. 
Selections from the greenhouse, which can be frequently replaced with fresh supplies , arc apfro - 
priate. The beds should be simple in design and placed on the margin of the main terrace walk. 
suited to architectural perma¬ 
nency. Only the crucial points, 
the axial centers, should he 
accentuated and relieved by 
these solitaires ; the entrances, 
driveways, the intersection ot 
paths and their points ot de¬ 
parture will offer the proper 
suggestions for their suitable 
disposition, while the bolder 
proportions ot the house, in 
submission to time-honored 
custom, might be emphasized 
by the cedar, the cypress and 
the like. 
Leaving now the somewhat 
cold formality ot the entrance 
level, let us seek the central 
terrace—the oasis ot the gar¬ 
den. Its atmosphere recalls 
to memory the quiet charm of 
the quadrangle ot an English University or 
the cloistered court of an Italian monastery. 
It is the highest form of beauty of which 
garden art is capable. It is also the most 
enduring and uniformly satisfying. It is 
suggestive of the spiritual rather than the 
physical. The French term it, “the sense 
of the beautiful in space.” Its beauty con¬ 
sists in its form, its latitude, rather than in 
its detail of broad polished sunlit lawns, 
embosomed by double rows of shapely trees. 
The art of planting in the extreme simplicity 
here exhibited, consists chiefly in temperance 
of execution, in knowing “when to give 
over, and lay by the pencil.” Here are no 
flowers, no shrubs. When we have decided 
which trees to use for the lateral turf-paved 
avenues, whether it shall be the epicurean 
lime, with its delicate spring incense; the 
tapering maiden-hair or the liquidambar, 
wonderful even in their 
leafless beauty; when we 
have decided to connect 
these two lateral avenues 
with two smaller avenues 
of yews—“ so thick, so 
fine, so full, so wide ” — 
naught remains to be 
done save to place the 
sun-dial central to this 
terrace and to all the 
garden. Here is thetrue 
throne of the sun-dial, 
where all is calm, quiet 
and continuous, and not 
in the flower garden 
where it is generally 
placed, buried amidst 
the fading beauties of a 
few summer months. 
Next let us descend 
to the flower garden : 
AN ENGLISH COTTAGE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS 
Illustrating a background lacking in variety of color and outline , and also crowding too closely upon the hou. 
11 5 
