HousegrGar den 
Vol. I AUGUST, i g o i No. 3 
F aulkner farm, brook- 
line, MASSACHUSETTS. 
Designed by Charles A. Platt. 
To copy is sufficiently easy, a well-trained 
eve and a cunning hand are all that one needs : 
to create, to express a living quality in terms 
that are adequate and beautiful and through 
means that are at the same time sanctioned by 
the past and justified 
by the present, is a 
very different matter. 
When we first awoke 
from the unquiet 
dreams of the sweetly 
picturesque in land¬ 
scape gardening and 
became conscious ot 
the fact that there was 
something in the art 
besides vermicular 
paths and rockeries, 
turning so to the halt- 
forgotten old gardens 
of Italy and England 
for hints of the better 
way, there was danger 
at first that we should 
content ourselves 
with mere reproduc¬ 
tions of works of art, 
perfect in their places, 
but exotic when rude¬ 
ly transplanted to a 
newer soil. 
The fear was 
groundless, however, 
for almost at once men came forward to show 
how far more important was the underlying 
principle, than the superficial aspect of the old 
gardens, to insist that the art was one too great 
to bind itself to stolid copyism,but that it was 
so mobile, so enduring and above all so ab¬ 
solutely essential to civilization, that it de¬ 
manded the freest and most modern treat¬ 
ment, so long, of course, as this treatment was 
in accord with the established laws that hold 
here as in all other forms of art. 
The gardens that Mr. Platt has made for 
Mr. Sprague, at Faulkner Farm, Brookline, 
Massachusetts, are excellent examples ot just 
this sort of gardening tor they are conceived 
on thoroughly modern and original lines, they 
make no pretence at 
deceiving one into 
thinking he has been 
suddenly transferred 
to some unfamiliar 
Italian villa, while 
they are yet entirely 
obeisant to estab¬ 
lished law. Whatever 
flavour of Italy they 
give is due to the ar¬ 
chitectural stvle em¬ 
ployed, but we must 
have something, and 
an architectural style 
of our own is denied 
us, so we borrow of 
course, and in the 
present instance we 
have borrowed from 
1taly. 
1 fancy any land¬ 
scape architect would 
admit that the first 
duty of his art was to 
act as a kind of medi¬ 
ator, to be the means 
of a subtle musical 
modulation from art in concrete form in 
any dwelling or other architecture, to the 
surrounding raw, rank nature. Art and 
nature quarrel, except under very favour¬ 
able and now almost extinct conditions : they 
need to be blended, worked one into the 
other, and any building, however good, can 
be made of no effect if it is planted sullenly 
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