100 
House <3° Garden 
All Norlhfield Jur- 
nilure hears the 
b ade mark 
WouLdntYou Lo^e to 
Furnish a Sun Room? 
Northfield fibre furniture expresses 
perfectly not only the spirit of the sun 
room, but of the people who love sun 
rooms. 
Its texture, its finish and decoration 
and the coverings characteristically 
chosen for it harmonize delightfully 
with the cheerful, open, out-of-door 
atmosphere of the sun room. 
It is easy to select Northfield fibre 
furniture. Northfield davenports are 
made both with and without con¬ 
cealed beds. If there is need, occa¬ 
sionally, for an extra bed and no bed¬ 
room for it, the Northfield bed- 
davenport solves your problem nicely. 
It gives you a wonderfully comfort¬ 
able davenport and just as comfort¬ 
able a bed. And no one would guess 
the presence of the bed; it is so well 
concealed. 
Your sun room may be completely 
furnished with Northfield fibre furni¬ 
ture and extra materials for hangings 
may be secured to match the chair 
and davenport or day bed coverings. 
Your furniture dealer will gladly show 
you Northfield groups and get ma¬ 
terial sw'atches for your selection. 
Send us your dealer s name and we will 
mail you a copy of “ The Davenport With 
A Secret,” a helpful booklet.' 
THE NORTHFIELD COMPANY 
JIakers oj Good Furniture 
SHEBOYGAN, WISCONSIN 
J^orifrfie fd 
BED D AVE/N P O 
.4 lovely feature of this small in formal treatment is 
the archway formed over a path by flowering crabs 
THE COTTAGE GARDEN IDEA 
{Continuedfrom page 98) 
give; but another one, possibly more 
important, is that the spirit of the cottage 
garden is so naive and unpretentious that 
it cannot stand even the impressiveness of 
great size. Also, to enlarge a garden 
along lines that were originally intended 
for a small space generally means that the 
large garden will lose much of the inter¬ 
est it would have in a concentrated form. 
If the surroundings have been well 
chosen—and this is a matter of first im¬ 
portance—the whole landscape belongs to 
it. In a minute we can “leap the fence 
and see that all Nature is a garden,” as 
Horace Walpole said graciously of a land¬ 
scape designer of his day. So the mere lack 
of wide expanse in the garden need not be 
a matter of regret. 
Then, too, the small size of the garden 
has practical recommendations besides 
those of suitability. A cottage that is to 
be used particularly for the summer 
months, and only for weekends during the 
spring and faU, will be planned with every 
consideration for labor-saving, and the 
same economy should be studied in the 
garden. A sheltered seat for lazy days, a 
vegetable plot to occupy strenuous ones, 
and a border for flowers which may be cut 
freely are all the essentials. Above all, 
the garden should avoid trying to com¬ 
bine a variety of so-called garden features. 
If a garden is going to require practi¬ 
cally no attention, if it is really going to 
be a labor-saving garden, then a good deal 
of labor must go into it in the beginning. 
The loam should be rich, deep, and of 
just the right consistency: neither too 
clayey nor too sandy. Well-rotted cow 
manure should be used liberally, and the 
depth of the topsoil should be, at the 
very least, a foot. It should be well 
drained underneath. If such preparations 
as these be made, and without them there 
can be no luxuriant success, another 
reason will be made obvious why cottage 
gardens should remain small: for these 
preparations are apt to be both tedious 
and expensive. 
Next to the quality of the topsoil, the 
most important consideration is that of 
the enclosure. Anyone who would build 
a garden open on every side to the staring 
world hasn’t the cottage garden instinct. 
He should do something in the so-called 
Italian style, with imitation stone, vari¬ 
colored conifers, and an elegant array of 
cannas. For one of the prime characteris¬ 
tics of the cottage garden is its modesty. 
It offers a glimpse of itself over a hedge 
or through an arbor, but it doesn’t place 
itself on exhibition. The enclosure, then, 
should surround the garden completely. 
One side of it will be the house, as it will 
be remembered the cottage garden is not 
something detached and at a distance, 
but is stepped into from the doorway. 
The other three sides may be of fence, 
lattice or hedge. Both the fence and the 
lattice would be simple in design, sturdy 
of construction, and covered with vines. 
A type of fence splendidly suitable for the 
purpose is of split saplings, seasoned, 
wired closely together, and set tightly, 
erect, between locust posts. It makes 
an inexpensive and unobstrusive fence, 
and it subordinates itself nicely to any 
insistent architectural note the house 
may have. It may be of any reasonable 
height over 5 '. This one example will be 
sufficient, because it indicates the general 
feeling of design and construction par¬ 
ticularly suitable for cottage gardens. 
For hedges, the yew of England finds 
its nearest counterpart here in the native ^ 
hemlock. The yew is a deep rich green, 1 
but it is also sombre. The hemlock’s 
green is grayer and more gay. Yew will 
not grow reliably in this country while 
hemlock is one of our hardiest conifers. 
It shapes up well, and in a few years, if 
planted at a decent height, produces a 
thick and close-knit hedge. There is no 
other evergreen as nearly suitable. 
Privet is a little smug for the cottage 
garden. To have the rest of garden true 
to tj’pe, and then to have it framed by a 1 
neatly clipped privekhedge, would be like 
setting a fine peasant potterj' cup in a i 
five-and-ten saucer. Hawthorn {Cra¬ 
taegus crus-galli) has character. It is as 
hardy as, and more durable than, privet. 
It is to a great degree more lovely. Euro- ■ 
pean beech and hornbeam, similar in ap- ] 
pearance, are splendid for large hedges. 1 
In fact, all the hedge plants named here i 
are best when allowed to reach considera- 'i 
ble height and width. There has got to ■j 
be a fair height if there is to be privacy, | 
and if there is no room for a husky width 4 
of 3 ' or more a fence or a lattice had better i 
be used instead. i 
The two best path materials for the 1 
cottage garden are brick and flagstone. 1 
Ultimately the brick, laid without any 
effort to achieve an “interesting” pat- i 
tern, will become moss-grown and mel- 
{Continued on page 102) 
