Planning the House and the Garden Together 
A PLEA FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOUSE AND GROUNDS FROM A DEFINITE CONCEPTION PLANNED OUT 
IN ADVANCE-THE GOOD RESULTS OF CO-OPERATION BETWEEN ARCHITECT AND LANDSCAPE DESIGNER 
by Louis Boynton, Architect 
Photographs by the Author and others 
If house and garden were planned independently, a uniform whole such as this would be 
extremely difficult to obtain 
T HERE has been 
a great deal 
written about the 
planning of the 
house and about the 
arrangement of the 
grounds; and there 
have been endless 
pictures published 
of them—both to¬ 
gether and separate¬ 
ly. But while the 
fact that there 
should be an inti- 
mate relation be¬ 
tween the house and 
its surroundings is 
more or less generally understood, some recent experiences of my 
own have brought it home to me that this is a point that needs 
emphasizing. 
It does not seem to be commonly realized that the placing of 
the house on the ground and the arrangement of the grounds in 
relation to the house, should be a matter of design; in other 
words, that it should be the result of a perfectly definite concep¬ 
tion arrived at in ad¬ 
vance, and that the whole 
arrangement should be 
thought out quite fully 
when the house is de¬ 
signed. Nor is it com¬ 
monly considered that 
the house and grounds 
should be designed as a 
unit and that neither 
should predominate. 
Some time ago I was 
talking of this very 
thing with a friend who 
said: “Yes, I see. It is 
as if you had a stone of 
a certain shape and col¬ 
or ; the setting should be 
designed to fit it.” My 
answer was that was not 
at all my meaning. To 
my mind a much finer 
way would be to design 
or imagine an ideal ring, 
for instance, and then 
get the exact gem to 
take its place as a part 
of the whole and in re¬ 
lation to the desired set¬ 
ting. The stone and the 
setting should be of 
equal importance and the 
result of a preconceived 
idea. This, of course, 
Mr. W. P. R. Pember, architect, has 
made the most of a lot 60 x 1 50 feet 
does not preclude 
the possibility of 
getting very 
charming effects 
where one or more 
of the elements are 
predetermined. 
I find that far too 
many people fail to 
realize that the 
man who designs a 
house has any in¬ 
terest or responsi¬ 
bility beyond the 
actual walls of the 
structure. It is 
common —perhaps 
usual — to expect an architect to design a house which so long 
as it does not exceed the size of the available ground, may be lo¬ 
cated by the owner, in a more or less perfunctory way, without 
either asking or taking the advice of one—either architect or 
landscape designer — who has the peculiar kind of vain imagina¬ 
tion necessary to visualize the effects which will result from any 
given arrangement. Good design in any field is only the result 
of a specialized a n d 
highly trained imagina¬ 
tion. 
Of course in the small 
suburban “lot” there is 
generally no choice; the 
location of the house is 
determined by the fact 
that there is no room to 
spare and by the estab¬ 
lished distance from the 
sidewalk at which 
houses are being built. 
However, I venture to 
say, that in the case of a 
lot of a hundred feet 
square or over, there are 
almost always several 
possible arrangements 
and that the obvious and 
frequently commonplace 
scheme is by no means 
the best. 
Of course the first con¬ 
siderations in a countn 
house are the relation to 
the sun and the prevail¬ 
ing winds, the contour of 
the ground and possible 
views. These elements 
afifect the layout of the 
grounds as vitally as 
they do that of the house. 
The writer had an in- 
On this lot, 1 00 x 200 feet, the desired 
isolation between service yard and 
garden has been obtained. Louis 
Boynton, architect 
(298) 
