132 
House Garden 
The initials of 
a friend 
You will find these letters on 
many tools by which electric¬ 
ity works. They are on great 
generators used by electric 
light and power companies; 
and on lamps that light mil¬ 
lions of homes. 
They are on big motors that 
pull railway trains; and on 
tiny motors that make hard 
housework easy. 
By such tools electricity dis¬ 
pels the dark and lifts heavy 
burdens from human shoul¬ 
ders. Hence the letters G-E are 
more than a trademark. They 
are an emblem of service—'the 
initials of a friend. 
COLOR IN GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 
T he beauty of gardens consists in 
harmony of form and color and 
perfume, so when one speaks of color in 
gardens he is met with the reply that the 
flowers are to supply the glowing ele¬ 
ment in the picture. This, however, is 
the answer of the merest rustic; we have 
seen gardens filled with most gorgeous 
blooms that in the end constituted a 
veritable anarchy of colors—a reign of 
terror, we might say, of hues clashing 
and threatening in the sunlight. The 
first element of a garden must be peace 
and the ideas of peacefulness that pre¬ 
vail in a giv^en time or country may be 
estimated in the forms and colors of 
their horticulture; in the high walls that 
surround old-fashioned parterres we 
may read the intense desire for seclu¬ 
sion from the troublous outer world; in 
the open grounds of later years we can 
read the brotherly delight in a beauty 
shared with one’s neighbors. There is 
thus a tradition in gardenings as defi¬ 
nite as that of household architecture. 
PERSIAN AND ARABIAN GARDENS 
In the gardens of the Persians and 
Arabs, from which all our modern art 
of gardening seems to come in direct 
line, we find a careful study of the 
effects of color; the pools of running water 
are always arranged so as to reflect 
the flowers and shrubs of highest hues; 
the use of blues and reds in the fountain 
is very frequent; illuminated tiles are 
employed, as in the later Spanish and 
Portuguese quintas, to fill the basins, or¬ 
nament the walls and cover the stiles and 
seats. Arches of the gateways and the 
patios in gilt and all the colors of the rain¬ 
bow are the background for trees of the 
darkest and most lustrous greens. One 
must not object to us that many of these 
gardens today seem ugly and vulgar in 
their colors; we can hear the traveller in 
China and Eg>’pt raise this point with 
some justice; in Spain where the landscape 
was stripped of its forest with some delib¬ 
eration, this fault may seem to have 
some bearing, if one does not remember 
that in the destruction of the foliage 
the whole color scheme was ruined, so 
that the elements intended to act prop¬ 
erly in contrast are now left to glare in 
nudity against the sky. We can note 
that in many cases the same decorations 
of tiles or aznlejos that seem extrava¬ 
gant in the abandoned gardens, when 
carried out within the porches and 
apartments of the houses are very won¬ 
derful in their effect, showing that the 
original color scheme of the gardening 
has been destroyed. 
ITALY’S CLASSIC STYLE 
The classic gardens of Italy set the 
fashion of white and green in garden 
colorings. It will be remembered that 
many of these old gardens were ar¬ 
ranged on the site of ruins, at a time 
when the recovery of ancient statuary 
was frequent and in a land where the 
foliage of cypresses and bays is very 
dark, and the flowers, for all their rich¬ 
ness, are touched with melancholy; we 
can see the hungry Italian soul tending 
at an early period to its highly painted 
churches and its Della Robbia ceramics. 
We are not even sure that the ancient 
Latins confined themselves to so simple 
a gamut of colors when we learn of 
traces of color being discovered on some 
of the marble masterpieces of art, argu¬ 
ing a use of polychrome far more gen¬ 
eral than earlier critics had been led to 
expect. It is also to be noted that under 
the colder sun of Tuscany, Lombardy 
and Venezia the use of color in the ar¬ 
chitecture of homes and churches grows 
more intense and variegated. 
CLIMATE AND COLOR 
Indeed, the effect of climate is an im¬ 
portant element in this question; in 
countries where the lights are intense or 
where the summers are short and the 
winters extreme we find a stronger tend¬ 
ency to provide the comfort and de¬ 
light that come from gay tones and 
cheerful lightings. In richly hued lands 
the cultivation of color seems to smack 
of luxury and aestheticism; but in coun¬ 
tries like Scandinavia the gayest pot¬ 
teries and decorations take on a plain¬ 
tive character with their attempt to 
warm the home and the garden against 
the always promising snows. ... In Eng¬ 
land where the art of Erance met in 
struggle with the Dutch, color, except 
for the red brick, almost entirely dis¬ 
appeared from garden architecture; in 
North America the tradition of the col¬ 
onists took the same direction; the wild 
roses against the rude stone walls or 
wicket fences; the weathered gray and 
red barns gave the only touch of color 
that our scenery knew. With later 
years came the landscape gardening of 
republican France and the scenic effects 
inspired by Rousseau; the English for¬ 
mal garden, and later the Italian and 
Spanish parterre; all of which had lost 
the color qualities of original gardening 
as derived from the Orient. 
Color, which has reasserted itself in 
our houses and public structures, must 
now be established again in its proper 
place in our gardens. From China, 
Japan and India have come motives of 
ancient garden structures, kiosques, arch¬ 
ways, bridges, all full of richness in tiles, 
lacquers, and bronzes; we have orna¬ 
mented gables, terra-cotta dragons and 
divinities, variegated lamps and glitter¬ 
ing fountains. The renaissance of color 
is at hand; out in a suburb of New 
Jersey one could discover recently the 
exquisite beauty of an old green iron 
swan which had been painted to the 
hues of a snowy fowl that scattered 
water magically in the midst of a simple 
cropped lawn. Nobody who has seen it 
will ever forget the “Swallows Foun¬ 
tain” at Cintra in Portugal, a lovely 
domed kiosque of dull gilt plaster, the 
walls of tiles dark blue and gold set in 
a shadowy corner of the hills. The 
tinted houses on the shores of Posillipo, 
the glitter of the halls and patios of the 
.\lhambra, the pinnacles of Venice, the 
colored roofs of Scandinavia and all 
the gleaming treasures of India and Asia, 
reveal to us that we have hungered for 
the joy and warmth that is in color, 
and color alone. Thomas Walsh 
GENERAL ELECTRIC 
