54 
House & Garden 
WHEN YOU PLAN YOUR GARDEN 
The Grounds Must Be Considered First As a Whole 
and Laid into a Livable and Appropriate Setting 
RICHARD H. PRATT 
N O doubt ninety per cent of all small 
houses are planned without a thought 
as to their grounds. And of that col- 
lossal majority many are built and continue 
to exist indefinitely with their plots in the 
same thought-unblemished state. Even so, 
it is difficult to decide, after extensive ob¬ 
servation among this ninety per cent, whether 
it has been better completely to ignore the 
grounds or to turn them over to the rubber- 
stamp designing of the neighborhood’s land¬ 
scape gardening nurseryman. In either case, 
by considering the grounds as nothing more 
than a spot on which to place the house, or 
possibly with which to give the house an 
'‘ornamental setting”, there has been an ut¬ 
ter failure to regard them as the real asset 
that they actually are, to be used and en¬ 
joyed as an integral part of the establish¬ 
ment. Those of the ten per cent minority, 
on the other hand, who plan their grounds 
thoroughly to supplement the uses and at¬ 
tractions of the house, have arrived at the 
very essence of the art of garden design. 
For the substance of garden design as it 
affects the small place is just this: that the 
grounds be as pleasantly livable as the house 
itself. To give the grounds this quality 
they should be planned on very much the 
same principles as those on which the house 
is planned. In other words, rather than re¬ 
garding the grounds simply as an orna¬ 
mental setting for the house—something 
merely to be looked at, with a border plant¬ 
ing of shrubs, a foundation planting of 
vari-colored conifers, a sprinkling of “speci¬ 
men” blue spruces, Japanese maples, and 
weeping mulberries—they should be regard¬ 
ed somewhat as a continuation outdoors of 
the house plan inside; an arrangement (on 
a grander scale, of course, and on a basis 
which will accept the existing conditions of 
the site as a sort of mold into which the 
scheme will fit sympathetically and appro¬ 
priately) of spaces that can be compared to 
the rooms of the interior. 
One of the objections to this method of 
small place planning is that it prevents an 
effect of spaciousness. This objection might 
be worth considering if it were possible on a 
small place to get an effect of spaciousness 
which was not an utter delusion. The bluff 
of sham spaciousness is so easily called that 
the tiling eventually becomes an annoyance. 
In the end, the emptiness, the idleness, and 
the foolish pretence of the specimen-dotted- 
lawn idea on the small place, or anywhere, 
for that matter, cannot fail to create a 
healthy reaction toward the type of arrange¬ 
ment which makes the whole place both use¬ 
ful and beautiful. 
When it is necessary to build a small 
house the usual thing is to accept the chal¬ 
lenge of its limitations in size and make the 
most of them; to give it charm and useful¬ 
ness through intimacy and ingenuity rather 
than to throw the whole thing into one huge, 
barnlike room impressive because of its size 
but oblivious to all the amenities of comfort¬ 
able and pleasant living. In the same way, 
when we forego the questionable satisfaction 
of grounds that are spacious in the sense 
that the inside of a barn is spacious, for 
grounds that are divided into various areas 
as the interior of the house is arranged into 
rooms, we find that we have achieved a 
genuine effect of size by the simple expedient 
of increasing the usefulness of the plot and 
creating on it distinct varieties of treatment. 
To illustrate this idea of small place plan¬ 
ning the accompanying plan and sketches 
have been made to show a fairly level, partly 
wooded site, 100' by 200', in the process of 
design, and in its completed state. As the 
progressive stages of the arrangement are 
explained and the various principles in¬ 
volved are discussed, it should be kept in 
mind that while this particular plot, al¬ 
though it strikes a fair average, may be 
unlike any other plot, and that while the 
imaginary requirements and tastes of its 
owners may be in certain respects unlike 
your own, the idea which governs its plan¬ 
ning is an extremely flexible one—in practice 
if not in spirit—and should apply to your 
own problem with very little difficulty. 
The method of procedure is based on the 
theory that the layout as a whole is the really 
important thing, and that the various ele¬ 
ments of the scheme: the house, the gardens, 
the play spaces, the service areas, the ap¬ 
proaches, and the lawns, however significant 
individually, are all subordinate to that 
layout. 
In the first sketch the plot is shown as it 
stands naturally and unadorned. In this 
connection it is generally easier to formulate 
a scheme if you have just such a picture of 
your site in mind or just such an actual 
drawing of it to refer to. For however small 
the place happens to be, it is curiously dif¬ 
ficult to get a clearly tangible grasp on its 
whole appearance and significance by going 
over it on the ground. 
The second sketch indicates lightly and 
rather tentatively the house and garden and 
(Continued on page 110) 
The sketch plan 
illustrates the or¬ 
derliness and the 
directness so 
necessary in the l— 
planning of the \ 
grounds of the 
small place 
