October, 19 2 2 
45 
The 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
BULLETIN BOARD 
A MERICA appears to be receiving its share 
/"V of honors from across the water these days. 
It is very gratifying to find England ap¬ 
preciating and recognizing our endeavors. The 
National Sweet Pea Society of England awarded 
the prize for the finest new sweet pea this year 
to W. Atlee Burpee Co. for an orange-cerise seed¬ 
ling. It has been named, with the executive's 
consent, The President Harding. 
This year also the Royal Institute of British 
Architects has awarded to Thomas Hastings the 
society’s Gold Medal. Commenting on the 
award The Architect of London says, “Since the 
deaths of Stanford White and Charles McKim 
there has been no American architect who so fully 
sums up in his achievements the expression of 
what, may be described as the architectural re¬ 
naissance of the modern world. ... It is prob¬ 
able that to America is chiefly due the growing 
conviction that architecture is among the greatest 
expressions of civilization.” Further along it 
makes an interesting comment. “American archi¬ 
tecture shows in its development that it is no 
transplanted growth but the outcome of sys¬ 
tematic and scientific thought. ... In Florida 
and California the indigenous architecture of old 
Spanish colonies has been absorbed and devel¬ 
oped; while in New England the original Co¬ 
lonial and Old Dutch types have enriched the 
American vernacular. . . . These factors have 
ended in the production of a school of archi¬ 
tecture which is as distinctive as that of France." 
I N the course of a study to ascertain the 
origin of fires of proven electrical origin, the 
records of several hundred such fires in one 
of the Southern states were examined by the So¬ 
ciety for Electrical Development and it was 
found that the chief cause was lightning or elec¬ 
trical burnouts due to lightning disturbances. 
There is not a single record during the fifteen 
years of a building which was properly rodded 
being struck by lightning; all fires resulting from 
a building being struck by lightning occurring in 
buildings not provided with lightning rods or in 
buildings where the rods were defective or not 
properly grounded. It is impossible to say 
whether all the buildings in which such fires oc¬ 
curred would have escaped had they been prop¬ 
erly rodded, but it is very certain that many of 
them would not have caught fire. In equipping 
a building with lightning rods it is essential that 
the conductors should terminate in a sufficient 
number of points above the highest parts of the 
structure. These points should all be connected 
and the entire system run to a permanent 
“ground” in wet earth. 
& 
I N this issue start two new series of articles 
which we think are going to be quite service¬ 
able and interesting. Richard H. Pratt, land¬ 
scape architect, who is now on the editorial staff 
of House K: Garden, begins a new series “When 
You Plan Your Garden.” This series will con¬ 
sider all phases of landscaping for the home 
maker. In November his article will present the 
subject of fitting the garden to various types of 
sites. Simultaneous with this begins a number 
of diverting papers by Ruby Ross Goodnow, dec¬ 
orator. They are entitled “Pages From a Deco¬ 
rator’s Diary,” and will discuss new and interest¬ 
ing phases of decoration as Mrs. Goodnow ob¬ 
serves them. 
L AST year a State down South erected a 
statue to the boll weevil because, for all 
its destruction, that pest had brought pros¬ 
perity to the South in that it made farmers plant 
a variety of crops instead of concentrating on 
cotton. Today we received an invitation to at¬ 
tend the dedication of a monument to commemo¬ 
rate the discovery in Madison County, Iowa, of 
the Delicious Apple. It appears that this apple 
was originally discovered by one Jesse Hiatt in 
1872 and was called by him The Hawkeye. Since 
it has brought prosperity to Iowa, the citizens are 
going to immortalize it in stone. But one won¬ 
ders who was responsible for this apple before 
Jesse Hiatt discovered it. Is it the product of 
Johnnie Appleseed’s endeavors? For that strange 
traveler, who went about planting apple seeds 
in the early part of the last century, must have 
visited Iowa. 
P ORTLAND, which pf all our cities seems 
to be the most enthusiastic about roses, is 
awarding its gold and silver medal for the 
best new climbing rose and the best new rose pro¬ 
duced by an amateur to George C. Thomas, for 
his new climbing rose Mrs. George C. Thomas. 
This new rose, which was shown in the 1P20 Rose 
Annual, is the result of ten years of effort by Cap¬ 
tain George Thomas of Philadelphia to produce an 
ever-blooming climbing rose, and its record under 
the Portland test evidences his success. The new 
rose, planted in the International Rose Test Gar¬ 
dens in Portland, blossomed from May until Oc¬ 
tober, produced during that period over 400 
blooms and scored the highest of all roses tested 
in 1921. 
R ELATIVELY few' fires are in any way at¬ 
tributable to the use of electric service—• 
not more than one in forty, but all fires of 
electrical origin can be classified into three gen¬ 
eral and well-defined groups: 
(1) Fires due to circumstances which at pres¬ 
ent seem unavoidable, over which neither the 
purveyor of electric service or the user of the 
service has any control, such as fires due to build¬ 
ings being struck by lightning, static disturbances 
and accidents which defy ordinary preventive 
measures; 
(2) Fires due to installation faults for which 
the distributors of electric service and others en¬ 
gaged in providing the public with means for 
utilizing electric service are responsible; 
(3) Fires due to the abuse of electric service 
by those who use it. Based upon such classifi¬ 
cation, a recent investigation of several hundred 
fires of proven electrical origin shows that since 
the fiscal year ending June, 1017, the proportion 
of fires of electrical origin attributable to causes 
as yet beyond control has not varied from year 
to year to any great extent. Fires due to in¬ 
stallation faults, which can be laid to errors due 
to ignorance or carelessness on the part of the 
electrical industry, have shown a gratifying ten¬ 
dency tow'ard a consistent and marked decrease, 
but the fires due to abuse of electric service have 
shown an increase of 40%. 
A S we promised last month, this corner will 
be reserved for notes about some of the 
House & Garden contributors. 
Minga Pope Duryea, who writes on: “An Out¬ 
door Room for the Town House,” is a New York 
sculptress who creates intimate gardens for the 
settings of her garden figures. She has recently 
returned from abroad, where she has been collect¬ 
ing for House & Garden photographs of small 
English and French gardens. 
Mary Fanton Roberts, who has been contrib¬ 
uting the series called “If You are Going to 
Build,” was, for thirteen years, editor of the 
Craftsman< and founded and edited the Touch¬ 
stone. She is now on the staff of House & Gar¬ 
den in charge of the Architectural and Building 
Department. 
Elizabeth Leonard Strang is a landscape archi¬ 
tect w'hose work is well known throughout New 
England. 
H. D. Eberlein, who writes of the Remodeled 
Quaker Farmhouse, is an architectural and deco¬ 
ration authority. Among his books are—“Co¬ 
lonial Homes of Philadelphia,” “The Architecture 
of Colonial America,” “The Practical Book of 
Period Furniture,” “The Practical Book of Early 
American Arts and Crafts” and “Fireplaces and 
Furniture of the Italian Renaissance.” 
i 
