American Garden-Craft from an English Point of View 
where it is arranged in small beds and 
borders instead ot in the broad level 
sweeps to which English eyes are accus¬ 
tomed. Possibly the American gardener 
is right, with his scanty turf, and the diffi¬ 
culty of maintaining the English lawn in 
beauty in an uncongenial climate is reason 
for his disuse ot it. So there is a clear dif¬ 
ference of style for the American garden. 
Another distinction that comes at once to 
spiders and the limited veranda adjoining the 
house is the most that can be kept habit¬ 
able. But the American gardener, carrying 
on the direct descent from the piazza of Co¬ 
lonial days, has developed porticoed saloons 
and long vine-covered alleys whose effects of 
vista and shadowy contrasts to the brilliant 
sunlight make English gardeners envious. 
Indeed the country house gains a charm¬ 
ing addition when it can throw out piazzas 
the eye is the constant use of pergola and 
piazza in American gardening—evidence of 
different conditions. There are scarcely half 
a dozen days in the English summer when 
one wants a shady lounge or when one can 
with comfort take meals in the open air, but 
in the United States there must be a long 
season when life can be al fresco , and a gar¬ 
den-parlor becomes almost a necessity. In 
England, summer-houses, arbors and such 
like become the damp abode of beetles and 
and colonnades and so embrace within its 
arms flower gardens, fountains and set 
courts. And esthetically what a valuable 
connecting link such additions make be¬ 
tween the stolid, smooth permanence of the 
masoned structure and the vegetable ragged¬ 
ness of the surroundings! There is an abrupt 
incongruity in the English house plumped 
down in its garden, which only disappears 
when a century or so has tempered it to the 
landscape with lichens and moss, and its 
2 10 
