68 
House & Garden 
.4 winding stair¬ 
case leading from 
t h e improvised 
terrace connects 
the living floor of 
the house with 
the garden below 
THE OUTDOOR ROOM OF A TOWN HOUSE 
When Backyard Gardens Are Made Livable They Live 
When They Are Made For Show They Merely Exist 
A BACKYARD garden is apt to be like 
one of the objects in a museum. Eet 
us say that it has been retrieved from 
the dull ugliness of bare ground and naked 
board fences and dressed up like the Grand 
Exalted Ruler of Something Or Other, with 
a central plot of wonderfully manicured 
turf, set in the center of which is a concrete 
basin from which rises the figure of a pudgy 
lad holding a squirting carp, and about 
which plot of turf lies a mathematically 
precise border of those curi¬ 
ous plants with variegated 
foliage. It is something to 
view from a first floor win¬ 
dow as though it actually 
were labelled “Exhibit A.” 
Backyard gardens are apt 
to be like this because they 
are apt to lead an existence 
detached, except by sight, 
from the house. All they 
need is some real companion¬ 
ship—the feeling that they 
can be walked in, that they 
can be touched, sat upon, 
dug in; that they can pro¬ 
vide comfort and genuine 
pleasure, not at a distance, 
but right at hand. When 
they are given this com¬ 
panionship, and when they 
are made to feel that life for 
them is not just utter visual 
futility set about by futile 
ornaments in imitation stone 
and futile plants with 
flash} - leaves, they will re- 
MINGA POPE DURYEA 
spond with a real, companionable beauty. 
Occasionally direct contact with the back¬ 
yard garden is made difficult because the 
living floor of the house is a story above the 
ground, and the basement, which is given 
over to the service, opens upon it. This 
rather awkward situation is overcome in¬ 
genuously and attractively in a city back¬ 
yard illustrated in the two accompanying 
sketches and plan. In this case one of the 
three windows was made into a French 
window and a platform was built ufider it 
that becomes in effect a small, tile-paved 
terrace. This terrace was enclosed by a 
simply designed iron railing and, leading 
from this platform on the living floor level, 
a winding staircase makes a graceful descent 
to the garden. 
On a line with the outward edge of this 
platform an arbor has been built which is 
intended to screen the basement kitchen 
from the garden without cutting off the light 
from the outside. Under 
the platform this arbor has 
been framed in and stuc¬ 
coed. Beside the staircase a 
door leads into the tiny 
room thus formed — which 
may be used for storing 
garden tools and the like 
and from which access is 
made to the basement by 
way of the kitchen door. If 
one copies this arrangement, 
care must be taken to pre¬ 
vent the vines on the arbor 
from becoming too luxuri¬ 
ous and thus cutting off all 
light from the kitchen. 
Clematis m ontana and 
euonymous radicans, the 
first a not too greedy 
climber with large, ex¬ 
quisite flowers of rose, lilac, 
blue and purple, depending 
upon the variety, and the 
latter a hardy evergreen 
vine with small oval, waxy 
green leaves, might be used 
The terrace at the rear of the house, treated as a pergola, makes the transition 
between the living room and the backyard garden which extends to the end 
of the plot. To heighten the wall at the rear and make it a more effective 
screen a lattice has been erected on it 
