HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 
1911 
155 
Windows are made of celluloid sheets, upon which white ink lines represent the di¬ 
visions between the panes 
he wants, who cannot 
get the picture of the 
house in his mind’s 
eye, and who changes 
his mind with every 
suggestion made by 
his admiring (or 
otherwise) friends. 
While working up¬ 
on a prize competition 
for a small country 
house, I became im¬ 
pressed with the pos¬ 
sibilities of the model 
as a valuable adjunct 
to the regular plans. 
1 had been somewhat 
puzzled as to the 
treatment of a garden 
scheme. I was not 
quite sure how it 
would look, myself. 
So for my own satis¬ 
faction I set about 
having a cardboard 
model made of the 
house and grounds. 
Some of the accom¬ 
panying photographs 
show the result. The 
appearance of this 
miniature dwelling is 
very realistic. No one 
would suppose that the hedges and trees were made of sponges 
stained green; that the trailing vines on the house, the various 
vegetables and choice flowering plants were odds and ends, glued 
into place, trimmed to shape, and colored to represent geraniums, 
crimson ramblers, or other flowers. Gravel, such as you pur¬ 
chase for your canary bird, furnishes walks wonderfully natural 
in appearance. The grass is sprinkled (ready grown) on a glue- 
wet board, and only needs to be “mowed” in places to present a 
smooth, even surface. 
A case in point that 
should establish be¬ 
yond a doubt the 
value of the model 
house, may prove in¬ 
teresting. Not long 
ago a man for whom 
i was designing a 
twenty - thousand - 
dollar house came in¬ 
to my office. He 
seemed greatly upset. 
“Mr. Boyd,” said 
a quan¬ 
dary. My wife has 
an idea that the house 
won't suit.” I was 
surprised. The draw¬ 
ings for his house 
were nearing comple¬ 
tion. I had worked 
out with infinite pains 
a plan and elevation 
that I knew to be 
good, one which I 
felt sure was what he 
desired. I could not 
understand the reason 
for his-wife’s attitude, 
and told him so. 
“I’m sorry,” he 
said, “but she has 
been going over the plans. She says that she cannot understand 
plans at all. She wants to see what the house will really look 
like when finished.” Suddenly a happy thought me. “Well, 
then we’ll show her,” I said, “we’ll make her a model of the 
house and grounds as they would appear in reality.” 
That day the model was started. From the scale drawings the 
house was built, the grounds laid out, until at the end of a few 
weeks it stood, a perfect miniature of the structure I saw so well 
he, “I’m in 
It is only by the aid of a complete model that the building site, as a whole, may be 
visualized — gardens, lawn, shrubbery groups, trees and walks 
r 
It is difficult to know, without a complete model, whether your tennis court will have the disadvantage of being too near the kitchen 
porch, or whether this latter may be effectively screened off 
