EDITORIAL 
IVOMEN AND GARDEN COLOR In the recent issue of a 
SCHEMES—A REPLY British gardening periodi¬ 
cal, a reviewer, writing of 
a certain American book on flower culture, takes exception to 
the tendency American women have for planting their gardens 
according to a color scheme. His main objection is that the 
color scheme is not Nature’s way, and that it is not an artistic 
way. “I never saw a color scheme in the Alpine meadows or 
in the Jura woods or- among the California hills,” he says. “If 
we go to the best English gardens we see nothing of the kind 
at Nymans, or Borde Hill or Betton and many others.” 
To this we might reply that we have 
never seen in Nature such topiary work 
as that at Trewogey in Cornwall, where 
the yews are clipped after the fashion 
of chocolate drops in an August sun, 
nor such beds as there are at Castle 
Ashby in Northamptonshire, nor such 
pools as can be found at Branham Park 
in Yorkshire. 
While this reply may seem to beg the 
question, the reviewer has, for his part, 
mixed his terms. Before one considers 
the subject of gardens and gardening 
he must first make the distinction be¬ 
tween man’s way in the garden and 
Nature’s way. 
Nature’s way is a wild way; it is 
unrestrained, arbitrary, seemingly re¬ 
gardless of law or order. Nature 
abhors a straight line, according to the 
Brownian school. Man’s way, on the 
other hand, is more the way of the 
straight line, of geometrical exactness, 
of planting for a preconceived effect of 
succession. 
When man began to tame the wild garden he introduced into 
it his vagaries of straight line and color scheming, and thus, 
according to the gardener’s fashion of reckoning progress, the 
first mark of civilization was the use of such architectural for¬ 
mality and exactness in the garden as would express his way 
of doing things, of such order in arrangement and planting as 
would tend to greater productivity and ease of cultivation. 
Doubtless these changes first saw permanence in the work of 
Egyptians, whose gardens, if we can depend upon contemporary 
pictures scrawled on the walls of tombs, consisted of a parallelo¬ 
gram entered through a great portal and enclosed by a wall. 
Vines were trained along rafters supported by pillars, much in 
the fashion of our present-day pergolas. Beside these were 
straight walks, palm alleys and pools, geometrically square and 
correct. 
Dipping into some of the ancient gardening books, we find that 
man pursued his wilful course against Nature’s way from the 
earliest times. Xenophon tells us how Lysander, when Cyrus 
showed him “The Paradise of Sardis,” was “struck with admira¬ 
tion for the beauty of the trees, the regularity of their planting, 
the evenness of their rows and their making regular angles one 
to another.” 
Roman gardens of the Republican Period, although compara¬ 
tively simple and largely used for the skilful and profitable growth 
of fruit and vegetables, were based on a design that was purely 
formal in character. Cato ruled that gardens in or near the 
city should be “ornamented with all possible care.” The younger 
Pliny also speaks of his porticos and terraces, his fountains and 
statues, his trim, open parterre and shady alleys of palm and 
cypress — sheer artifices all of them: man working out a pre¬ 
conceived plan for Nature to follow. 
The same fundamental reasons for formalism can be applied 
in defense of color schemes in the garden, against which our 
English reviewer would rail. For, remember, there is no logical 
comparison between the nature-grown garden and the man-made, 
between the riots of color and curve 
that Nature produces and the subtly 
planned effects that man works out, 
save we base it on the fundamental dif¬ 
ferences between man’s way and Na¬ 
ture’s way. 
The color scheme is an expression of 
individuality—an imposing of one’s in¬ 
dividuality on Nature—and it is just 
as logical for a woman to express her 
personality in her garden as to express 
it in her frocks or the decoration of 
her rooms. Moreover, the color scheme 
is a higher expression of personality 
than is formalism. In the majority of 
cases strict formality is a pose, a with¬ 
holding of the genuine personality, just 
as is all posing. To plan and plant and 
bring to burgeoning beauty a color 
scheme is nothing more than express¬ 
ing those genuine — though unaccount¬ 
able — -verities and vagaries of person¬ 
ality for which men and women are 
loved and respected. 
A case in point is to be found on the 
pages of this present issue of House and Garden in the article 
entitled “A Pink Garden of Individuality.” Now, we have never 
laid mortal eye on the woman who made this garden. All we 
know of her is that she is young, that she had a penchant for 
white and pink, and that she planted her garden so that there 
would be a general succession of blossoms in these shades. 
Read the article and note her methods. Simple methods, on the 
whole. When you shall have finished the story you will know 
that a woman with a distinctly pink-and-white personality con¬ 
ceived and made that garden. You’ve read her personality in 
her garden! She has expressed that personality, not because it 
is the fashion to have pink-and-white gardens, but because 
caprice dominates when a woman expresses her personality. 
Our British reviewer should take courage in the feminine 
American garden color schemes. It is an earnest for better things. 
For other English writers have said of American women that 
they are not naturally individualistic. They follow the leader. 
If the leader wears a taffeta skirt with scallops, every woman from 
Maine to Texas will want a taffeta skirt with scallops. British 
women, they claim, are quite the opposite. They have the 
courage of their convictions — in clothes at least, whatever the 
effect. Is it not a welcome sign, then, when American women 
begin to express individuality, even if it be through the medium 
of color schemes in the garden ? 
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11 To the Readers of House and Garden: 
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|| of House and Garden. There, in detail, is || 
II set forth the fact of those changes, which, in the |i 
11 future, will make House and Garden of even || 
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|| In that time House and Garden has grown || 
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II man and woman in every section of America || 
1 1 who is interested in better houses and better || 
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|| can Homes and Cardens — the oldest of those || 
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