April, 1919 
•den phlox. Many other flowers there are 
which I shall leave to your guess from 
the pictures I send. For large gardens, 
you will agree, the annuals are best by 
themselves, but for this kind of an inti¬ 
mate ‘patch’ I say bring them in. One 
wants the feeling of full luxuriance in 
•every cranny, and the friends of a single 
season give this. Then, too, they pay 
abundant rent by giving plenty of cut 
jiowers and keeping out the weeds. And 
so, against the clumps of coreopsis and 
peonies and anchusa I have plants and 
plants of nasturtiums, pansies and mig¬ 
nonette, and further back in the bed 
African marigolds, asters and petunias. 
“The little folks’ play is not confined 
to the labeled play area any more than all 
living is carried on in your living room. 
The sense of possession of a domain makes 
the little people happy. In the play area 
are a bird house and a pool made by 
sinking half a cask in the ground. Gold¬ 
fish were to flop gracefully about in it, 
but alas, they were not purchased before 
they were found to be no longer in the 
market here. To put a stop to neighbor 
boys’ paddling in and about the edges 
and making a mud puddle, several craw¬ 
fish were captured and interned therein. 
The offenders cannot be bribed to put boy¬ 
ish toes into the water now. 
“The border of the play area is a museum of 
roses, cucumbers, cabbages and cannas; this in 
response to childish demands. It is barbaric 
hut stimulating, delighting the little proprie¬ 
tors’, eyes, and even instructing the elders in 
the possibilities of combinations of foliage. 
“We are by no means minus our war garden, 
but that is on the vacant lot close by. 
“It did not take long, by locking the gate 
now and then, to persuade the tradesmen not 
to enter through the garden. The stepping 
stones, let it be explained, are set 30 inches 
apart. Delivery boys in a hurry will step on 
them thus, and at the regular garden spacing 
of 2 feet they will not, only finding them con¬ 
fusing hazards. 
“I know that you will not wish any more 
lengthy account. The details- from which 
shelter, gates and lattice were made give 
you a more eloquent narrative of the pro¬ 
portion of things. The shelter I put up 
myself, after having the wood cut at the 
mill. The brick and the broken stone 
walks, too, I laid, for exercise—and to 
save money for W. S. S. It was pleasant 
labor. 
“Indeed, I wonder sometimes whether 
the ‘land proprietor’ is any happier among 
his professionally landscaped acres than I 
am when pottering about these grounds 
which I have planned and worked on my¬ 
self. Were I in his place I should doubt¬ 
less follow his example, but there would 
not be the same sense of personal achieve¬ 
ment. They are so intimately a part of us, 
these shrubs and walks and flowers, for in 
a sense we have created them. 
“And now the price paid for a pleasant 
glimpse out of doors is a weekly pushing 
of the mower, an occasional weeding, and, 
through the drought of July, a sprinkling 
of evenings. How a summer watering 
helps autumn flowering no one will know 
until he has practiced it. It really is 
hardly a ‘price’, for there are far more 
boresome tasks than playing a hose over 
the flower borders when the sun has gone 
and the intangible dampness which comes 
with night creeps into the air. 
“When you return, come and visit us. You 
will not have to sleep on the floor bed in a 
room without sash, as you did erstwhile. I 
suppose before we see you, you will have 
fonned some lasting impressions of German 
architecture. But do not let that crowd out 
ideals of our own American Colonial style, 
which we ‘over here’ so much admire!” 
START YOUR BUILDING NOW 
House y Garden s Survey of the Building Situation Shows the Present 
a Propitious Time for Going Ahead 
D uring the last three months House & 
Garden has been making a country-wide 
survey of building conditions, costs of ma¬ 
terials, labor, etc., in order that it might place 
before its readers such facts as would guide 
them in prospective building operations. The 
collated opinions of architects, builders, and 
manufacturers show a condition that is very 
propitious for building. Architects attest that 
the work is already beginning to creep from 
their drafting boards. The Information Ser¬ 
vice of House & Garden is receiving more 
building inquiries on building than ever before 
in its history. Manufacturers report that, de¬ 
spite labor uncertainty and the confusion that 
needs must follow the reintroduction of 2,000,- 
000 men back into the business and manufac¬ 
turing world, prices will soon begin to show a 
more reasonable proportion. 
The war put a necessary inhibition on build¬ 
ing and the transportation of building mate¬ 
rials. Six months have passed now since the 
armistice was signed. Government contracts 
are no longer eating up the output of our fac¬ 
tories, and the railroads are open for the 
handling of building necessities. For four 
years men and women who planned to build 
homes were hesitant about the prospects, and 
during the past two years private building al¬ 
most came to a standstill. 
This situation now changed, it is both the 
opportunity and the duty of those who plan 
to build to go ahead with the work. While 
prices are still high, the only way they can be 
lowered is by increasing the demand for the 
goods. Increased demand brings quantity pro¬ 
duction, and quantity production brings lower 
rates. Moreover, labor, seeing that there is 
work to be done, will soon enough settle down 
and do it. No situation is more conducive to 
high prices than stagnation in the laboring and 
manufacturing world. Without demand such 
stagnation is inevitable. 
It is the high prices of building material 
that make so many prospective home builders 
wait for the Utopia when prices will drop to a 
pre-war level. As one architect explained it,, 
“a good many people have forgotten the fact 
that in normal times building increased about 
five per cent, a year, so that if there had been 
no war, building in 1919 would have been 
about twenty-five per cent, more than in 1914. 
Therefore, the excess price for abnormal times 
must be calculated above the twenty-five per 
cent. On this basis the excess for normal 
times is not as great as some people think.” 
Another architect advises that readers will 
not gain much by long postponement of their 
building operations. They may get a slight 
deduction in cost, but they would lose the ad¬ 
vantage and pleasure of their new building in 
the interval. This same architect reports that 
during the week previous he started excava¬ 
tions for one $50,000 house in Cleveland, and 
was going ahead with plans for twenty more 
in the same city. 
In the beginning of any great resumption of 
business, such as building, the work must nec¬ 
essarily creep at first. Yet there is every indi¬ 
cation that the desire of prospective builders 
at the present is being witheld by fear of 
prices. The first question, then, that a man 
must ask himself is: “How much do I want 
this home?” For four years he has been hesi¬ 
tating on patriotic grounds. On the same pa¬ 
triotic grounds he should now go ahead. Only 
by the energies of the individual home builder, 
the willingness and intent to see his dream of 
a home consummated in brick and stone and 
stucco, can the present creeping stage of the 
building situation be stimulated into healthy 
action. 
House & Garden feels justified in advising 
its readers Jo go ahead with their building. If 
the work is on the architect’s drafting boards, 
dare the future and make it move from those 
boards—^tell the architect to go ahead. If you 
have not yet consulted an architect, go to him 
now. Lay your plans now. Study up on the 
purposes and capacities of the various build¬ 
ing materials which go into the makeup of a 
house. Plan to use the best materials your 
money can buy. Get together with the archi¬ 
tect. See that house begin to shape itself on 
paper—and then transform it from paper into 
the real thing. 
