House and Garden 
SOME NOVEL PIECES SHOWN AT A RECENT EXHIBITION 
struction of these garden adjuncts is of the simplest 
character, and it is indeed the essential simplicity 
and restraint of the design which makes them so ef¬ 
fective where a pretentiousness horn of complex lines, 
less rigid and restrained in their combinations would 
have made such a use of woodwork inadmissible. 
In the examples of minor garden furniture, illus¬ 
trated on pages 184 and 185, this same simplicity 
A SIMPLE GROUP 
of outline and careful adaptation of the material to 
its uses, having due regard also to exposure to the 
weather, results in that air of appropriateness w'hich 
is so characteristic of these pieces. 
In the example of the “red garden” of the Darm¬ 
stadt Garden Exhibition of 1905, shown on page 186, 
w 7 e see a quaint and somewhat japanesque effect 
produced by the same means. 
Garden development in our country is in so early 
a stage, as yet, especially as regards the smaller pri¬ 
vate garden, that we seldom make real use of our 
opportunities, even if we pay attention to the gar¬ 
den at all. Usually, in our smaller gardens, we are 
content to lay them out and plant them on a modest 
scale, hut merely as something to be looked at from 
the house windows—our own, or our neighbor’s— 
rather than used. This is due to two causes, hirst 
because we are apt to run away from home in sum¬ 
mer, when the garden is most usable; and, secondly 
because we do not understand how to go about the 
use. Even on city lots, our tea tables and easy chairs 
in the garden may be skilfully and completely screened 
from the curious eyes of our neighbors, without bury¬ 
ing them too deeply in their sheltered retreats, whether 
of pergola, tea-house or arbor. In rural or suburban 
gardens the problem of course is more easily solved. 
184 
