HOUSE AND GARDEN 
198 
December, 1909 
An example of a formal garden in America that has no reason for being, in that it is a 
distinct unit not intimately connected with its house 
just gone around in a circle and are no farther now than when we 
started !— 
Does it? No — for here is the pith of my argument; here is 
what I have been talking all this time to get ready to say: the 
formality of America is individual and distinctly American, and 
not to be expressed in alien modes, whether of building, garden¬ 
ing, salutation or what not. Upon occasion we are quite as 
punctilious as may be, but we are punctilious in our way, and not 
according to a foreign fashion. Therefore we are bound to pro¬ 
duce very different results, even within the restrictions of conven¬ 
tional lines, from those accomplished by other races — if we go 
quietly along and permit ourselves to develop. 
A formal, architectural, or conventional garden must continue 
along one of the principal axes of the house. If it cannot do this, 
make no attempt to have such a garden. And formal design of 
whatever extent, even the most limited, must be carried out on the 
axis of some feature of the house, such as an entrance, a porch, 
a large window or any important detail. 
This latter rule unerringly picks out the prominent archi¬ 
tectural lines which may be carried on beyond the wood or 
stone of the building, even though the building itself is absolutely 
irregular—and it supplies the necessary motif for planting even 
the tiniest dooryard, which, by the way, ought 
always to be planted upon such a motif. 
The smaller the garden area the more strict 
should be the adherence to conventional lines, 
though they need not by any means extend 
to the limits of a 50 x 100 foot suburban plot. 
Rarely, indeed, does the average suburban house 
lend itself to any very extensive formal scheme, 
for it itself is seldom laid out upon the regular 
lines of more pretentious dwellings. Some 
detail must therefore be chosen to work from 
— and usually this is the entrance, it being 
naturally the most prominent. With this well 
worked up and well blended into the general 
scheme, conventionality may stop right here, 
and broader lines may be followed in the rest 
of the work. 
Planning, however, is not all that there is 
to a formal garden. The lines must be carried 
out with material suited to them, and unless 
this is done the whole will inevitably fail. 
Plants are as different in their manners as 
people and quite as cranky looking when put 
in the wrong places. Stiff and prim little trees 
and shrubs are to be had in plenty—but they 
must be selected of a shape conforming to the position they are 
to occupy, and though a tangle of flowers may fill a given space 
in the formalest of gardens, the space itself must be set aside in 
a distinct and precise manner. 
Evergreens furnish such a variety of shapes, from Gothic to 
globular, that they are naturally much used in architectural 
planting — and formal design becomes, therefore, especially 
desirable in places where winter effect is sought. 
Upon the man or woman with an ingrowing prejudice against 
formality anywhere out-of-doors, let me urge, above all else, its 
appropriateness as a means of transition from Nature to man. 
Have wildwood, have daisy-studded meadows, have grand 
old trees and parklike sweeps of lawn by all means, if you have 
the space — but do not outrage these by setting in their midst an 
artificial excrescence in which to dwell without softening the 
affront as much as lays within your power, by all the means at your 
command. Even if there were no beauty in formality this need 
for it would be argument enough in its favor—but it is beautiful; 
in and by itself, it possesses a serene and stately beauty absolutely 
unrivaled. It is only the extravagant abuse of it that makes 
it undesirable—but extravagance is vulgar whatever form it 
takes, and intemperance is always bad taste. 
The exceptions to the rule requiring a somewhat formal treatment are: the house in the woods nestling among its trees, the low bungalow on the sand 
dunes, and the house growing out of the rocks, around none of which is a garden usually found. At the left is a summer home at 
Mt Pocono, Walter T. Smedley, architect; the house at the right is on a slope of the Ventura Valley, 
California, Messrs. Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, architects 
