German Houses and Gardens 
One will readily 
see that the same dif¬ 
ficulties and faults 
found in the modern 
houses are to be seen 
in the laying out of 
gardens. N o b o d y 
knows how to plan a 
garden rightly. The 
fashions and styles of 
all centuries have 
been expressed i n 
them. One only 
needs to consider 
how much nature and 
THE STRAIGHT AVENUE 
art grew into one 
another at the time of 
the Rococco, how the 
parks were required 
to produce the effect 
of salons and salons 
that of little gardens, 
how such motives of 
the garden as vines, 
shells and grottoes 
became the ornaments of the plastic art, and The garden is no 
we can observe in the course of develop- it is a humanized 
ment how the different styles influenced And further: “It 
the laying out of 
gardens, the straight- 
lined Empire style, 
then the fashion of 
England, and the 
large lawns of France. 
If one wanders now¬ 
adays through the 
gardens of the old 
and new world one 
finds in addition to 
all kind of attempts 
at styles the most 
grotesque mistakes, 
such as the desire to 
make woods out of 
gardens. With a 
few square yards of 
garden indeed are 
seen the attempts to 
make an artificial 
primeval forest. It 
seems to be desired 
to do away all at once 
with the impression the straight garden path 
that this is a creation 
of man’s hand, and 
therefore a picture is 
forced of an untrod¬ 
den wilderness with 
wildly flowing brooks 
and bushes and hid¬ 
ing-places. 1’his ap¬ 
pears to any reason¬ 
ing person—and we 
no longer live in a 
time when reason and 
beauty are at variance 
—a great absurditv. 
Mr. Paul Schultze- 
Naumburg is right, 
when he says : “ The 
laying out of a garden 
is, one may say what 
one pleases, an archi¬ 
tectural task, even if 
one does not build it 
of stones but uses 
the living plant as the 
main material for it. 
forest and no meadow, 
form of free nature.” 
is a task for the architect 
