A House and Its Garden 
liY ELISE GAEEAUDE E 
U \ BEAUTIFUL house in a lair landscape is 
the most delightful scene of the cultivated 
earth, and all the more so if there he an 
artistic garden.” 
d'he chief charm of Southern California is conceded 
to he in its perpetual gardenry, and Addison, indeed, 
might have \^ ritten of this lovely sunny country as he 
did of Italy, “sometimes our road led us through 
groves of olives or by gardens of oranges. ” 
But given the most favorable conditions of soil and 
climate, yet what fearful jungles of gorgeous vegeta¬ 
tion and what hideous set patterns in the midst of 
superb lawn one may find there. There is no reason 
wfiy we should not have true art in the garden, nor 
that we should not learn from Nature the best use 
of airy spaces, and the massing and grouping of trees 
and shrubs, and to accept the varied slopes she may 
offer. 
That the Italians understood gardening in the 
purely artistic sense is shown in some of their very 
old gardens—the Giusti Gardens at Verona for 
example—where trees in their natural forms are 
preserved to lend their peculiar beauty. Ehey loved 
the “divinely settled” form of tree or shrub or flower 
beyond any possible expression of man’s misguided 
efforts with shears, such as we see in old Dutch prints, 
now and then. I'hey realized also the charm a hit 
of w ater adds to a garden, and so introduced fountains 
and pools, being careful to avoid any impression of 
crowding when vegetation was placed in the water. 
The aim of this sketch is not only to uproot the idea 
of a set-garden-pattern at one side of a house, but 
more especially to show how a mass which is thor¬ 
oughly artistic may appear to spring of itself out of 
the very earth. This is the inevitable result where 
house and garden harmonize perfectly. 
The accompanying illustrations are of a Southern 
California house fashioned after the English thatch 
roofed cottage, the thatch idea being very cleverly 
carried out by the architect in the lines of the mam 
roof. 
As w'e approach the house from the street, by 
the red brick pavement and the bricked terrace 
we are reminded of the closed gentian of far-away 
New England hills whose inner recesses do not reveal 
themselves to the casual observer: for it is not until 
A SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA RESIDENCE 
G 7 
