Otyrtstmas liouse ^(Sarden 
1 ‘ 9 i - Z 
2375^7--SfeA^ 
0 'A\J 
)^M 
One reason why, amid 
the multitude of gardens 
of various kinds, there 
are relatively so few good 
ones is that people are 
misled by the charm of 
the individual things in 
them and cannot think of 
them as parts of a 
scheme. The average 
garden owner is content 
to exhibit to his friends 
his fine bed of asters or 
specimen blue spruce or 
superb mass of rhododen¬ 
drons. But this reduces 
a garden to the level of a 
nursery, or place for rais¬ 
ing plants. Your garden 
should be so made that 
the visitor entering says, 
‘‘What a beauti¬ 
ful place,” so that 
it is a good place 
to be in and 
needs no expla- 
nation. Its 
charm ought to 
appeal to any im¬ 
pressionable per¬ 
son whether 
knowing or car¬ 
ing anything 
about plants and 
flowers or not. It 
is a curious thing 
that it should be 
possible to collect 
a number of 
plants, trees or 
bushes into one 
place, any one of 
which would take 
a prize at an ex¬ 
hibition, yet the 
ensemble would 
b e unattractive. 
On the other 
hand there are many 
scenes in Montclair and 
other places made up of 
the simplest elements, or¬ 
dinary trees, bushes and 
turf and unpretentious 
architecture which are 
full of charm. Most peo¬ 
ple who make gardens 
overlook this very impor¬ 
tant point and set out the 
things they like best, or 
rather that they think they 
like best, and wonder why 
they somehow don’t look 
so well as they were ex¬ 
pected. In this way bril¬ 
liant colored things like 
scarlet salvia, small 
VI 
V This stone settee is on the lawn shown in No. I. It is an effective piece of com¬ 
position with its two small, well matched, blue spruces 
In a few years this well conceived little garden should be very charming. The two rows of 
plants on either side of the lawn would look better if inclosed by rows of box edging 
shrubs, or Japanese ma¬ 
ples and small evergreens 
abound in suburban 
grounds. The trouble is 
not that they should 
abound, but that they 
should abound where 
other things belong. They 
are incidents, trimmings 
or details used as main 
features. It is like using 
small and flimsy furniture 
in a large room or mak¬ 
ing the skirt of a dress of 
lace or ribbons. 
This brings us to an¬ 
other important principle 
of design, that of scale, or 
the relative sizes of parts 
and the whole. As we all 
know, nothing is great or 
small excepting 
b y comparison. 
This holds good 
in garden work 
as in other things, 
yet it is little un¬ 
derstood. Every¬ 
one knows that a 
piece of furniture 
may look too 
large in a small 
room and too 
small in a large 
room. Yet few 
people seem to 
think that the 
principle applies 
out of doors, but 
it is every bit as 
important as in¬ 
doors. A lawn 
ought to have its 
frame of planting 
proportioned i n 
size and extent, 
or the lawn will 
look bare and the 
planting mean. A large 
house will be exaggerated 
in bulk and conspicuous¬ 
ness by a fringe of bed¬ 
ding plants or small ever¬ 
greens at its base. The 
larger a walled garden, 
the higher will be its wall 
and the larger its beds. 
And so on. So that in the 
selection of planting ma¬ 
terial one should consid¬ 
er carefully whether it 
will enter into compari¬ 
son with the larger fea¬ 
tures, such as the house 
and lawn, or whether it 
will be secondary and 
placed where small grow- 
The planting of evergreens here is too close to the house, besides the con¬ 
trast with the cannas at the end is unpleasant 
( 372 ) 
