76 
House Garden 
THE COTTAGE GARDEN IDEA 
T/u’ S///C//1 Gardens of England Contain the Essence of Good Garden Design and 
Are Rich in Suggestions for Gardens in This Country 
RICHARD H. PRATT 
W HY is it llial one usually returns 
from abroad with the feeling that 
English cottage gardens are, after all, 
the most completely satisfying in the 
world? They certainly have none of 
the richness and variety of the Renais¬ 
sance gardens in Italy, nor have they 
the amazing scale of the French gardens 
of Le Notre’s period; and compared 
with the larger gardens of England, for 
the best of which, by the way, they 
have furnished the inspiration, their 
scope is decidedly limited. Yet for 
some reason they win one’s affection in 
a way these other gardens are unable 
to do. 
They are so simply arranged, and the 
plants used in them are so familiar, that 
one wonders why it should be difticult 
to transfer their unique qualities to 
gardens here. Perhaps it is because we 
are tempted to be a little more ambi¬ 
tious than the cottage gardener was 
when he set out his garden. We 
aren’t quite sure that our own 
garden can become as delightful cottage garden snuggles 
° , , , up to the house so that one steps 
as the cottage gardens we have doorway directly onto a 
admired unless it be more con- jloiver-bordered path or terrace 
sciously designed and ornamented. We 
start out to make a simple garden; but 
we become anxious, and our garden be¬ 
comes sophisticated. 
Let us see just how an English cottage 
garden is made. In the first place it 
doesn’t set out to be so much a flower 
garden as a decorative dooryard. Its 
owner has a small plot of ground and 
he wants to make it attractive. He 
needs an entrance pathway, and as he 
wants it to be beautiful he borders it 
with flowers. If he wants places to sit 
on either side of his little plot he puts 
seats there and connects them as directly 
as possible with a path. This cross 
path he also lines with flowers, and he 
shades the seats with a tree or an arbor. 
He wants protection from the roadway 
and he wants seclusion, so he either 
plants a hedge around his plot or builds 
a fence and covers it with vines. He 
plants flowers or small shrubs against 
his cottage to soften the ground 
line, and he also plants flowers 
In the garden above local ma- where thev will have the back- 
planting, consisting largely of ground ot the hedge or the vme- 
lavender, is very simply handled {Continued on page 98) 
