House and Garden 
The fancy and appropriateness of a true 
garden-craft are shown too in “ Longcroft,” 1 
Mamaroneck, “Green Hill,” Brookline, and 
in the charming garden designed by Mr. 
Wilson Eyre for Mr. Charles L. Borie, Jr. 
at Rydal, Pennsylvania, 2 though a certain 
amount ot classical debris has drifted into 
them. Very snug and complete too is the 
little square rubble-walled court with its 
goodly vine arbor which Messrs. Keen & 
Mead have contrived at “ Brandywine 
Farm,” Lenape, and very pleasant are the 
double pergolas at their “ Swarthmore 
Lodge,” at Bryn Mawr. 
It would be superfluous to dwell critically 
upon details in the above. One may perhaps 
mention that the combination of vegetable, 
fruit and flower garden seems less satisfac¬ 
torily managed than is the case with us. 
The walled garden with espalier walks seems 
specially absent. And one matter in all 
these gardens which strikes an English gar¬ 
dener as outside the lines of his craft is the 
size of the flower beds, which would seem 
often twenty and even thirty feet across. 
It is an axiom with the English flower lover 
that his beds shall be manageable to culti¬ 
1 See page 222 of this number of House and Garden. 
2 “Chelten,” Rydal, and “ Fairacres,” Jenkintown, are two 
other gardens by Mr. Wilson Eyre, which are more artificial, but have 
the same true feeling for garden effect. 
vate and keep in order; and though he 
may make broad borders twelve feet wide 
for his large perennials, the grace of his 
garden is in narrow beddings not more 
than six feet wide, and such that they can 
be weeded from the path on either side 
without trampling on them. It is clear that 
a different scale of plan prevails in the 
American view of a garden. A bold, big 
growth is aimed at, which, forced into 
luxuriance by the midsummer heat, makes 
jungles ten feet high rather than the low 
flower bed, as we English grow it in our 
slow, cold English summer, with various 
ranunculus and gentian, pinks and cam¬ 
panulas and the whole phalanx of slender 
bulb-flowers. 
It is by climatic conditions that there is 
created a character for the American garden. 
Its bold tall growths, its wealth ot leafy 
creepers, its constant use of piazzas and 
pergolas, combine with the traditions of 
Colonial days to make distinction for a type 
of American garden, which is essentially 
progressive and national, and needs no bor¬ 
rowing from European sources. The un¬ 
necessary mimicries of Italian architecture 
and the lootings of European palaces seem 
to me to be the weak points of American 
garden-craft. 
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