78 
a 
House & Garden 
PAGES from a 
ECOIIATOR’S DIARY 
W HY go to the South Seas when Palm 
Beach blooms and glows like a jewel lifted 
from the sea? 1 had heard that Palm Beach 
was tropic only as to climate, skies, sands, 
and palm trees, and that there were no flowers 
there. It seemed strange, but I accepted the 
universal report of my friends, and when I went 
there, for the first time I was amazed at the 
miraculous vegetation. It is true that few of 
the new Palm Beach houses have flower gardens, 
but that is because their occupants haven’t taken 
the trouble to have them. One sees the hibiscus 
and alamanda and oleander everywhere, but 
given a little protection from the wind a varied 
flower garden will grow just as bravely. It was 
my pleasure—and amazement—to watch the 
development of the patio garden of Mr. William 
G. Warden’s house there. This garden is open 
to the sky, enclosed within the four walls of the 
house. When I first saw it, it was a barren, 
sandy waste of land and scrubby bushes one 
hundred feet square. 
\ MONTH later I went back, and a miracle 
A had come to pass. I was speechless with 
surprise. The desert had blos¬ 
somed like the rose, and like 
the lily and like a thousand 
beautiful tropic things. In one 
month palm trees waved, and 
grotesque banyan trees spread 
themselves against the lavender- 
blue walls, and bourgainvillia and 
alamanda vines flaunted their 
magenta and yellow flowers. As 
the Scotch gardener said to me, 
the plants did not know they had 
been moved! They did not drop 
a leaf! And they drank up a 
few days rain and held them¬ 
selves as proudly as if they had 
been born in this lovely spot. 
In Palm Beach houses open 
directly into gardens. Doors are 
unnecessary. One may walk 
into gardens from open galleries. 
The weather is too kindly to demand even tem¬ 
porary enclosure. One knows the habits of wind 
and rain, and certain exposures are protected, and 
others left absolutely open and unobstructed. In 
this bewilderingly lovely Warden garden the house 
wanders around three sides, and is connected on 
the fourth by a high wall, broken by an old gate 
of Spanish ironwork. Addison Mizner. the archi¬ 
tect envisioned it as an eleventh century deserted 
cloister, later redeemed and rebuilt in the four¬ 
teenth century. 
Mr. Mizner says every house should have a 
scenario, so he imagined this house as a gradual 
growth over several hundred years. The walls 
are colored a heavenly blue. Heavenly is literal, 
for this blue is a changing, melting blue that is 
violet in one light, pink in another, a hundred 
blues of the tropic sky. Against this changing 
color are cream colored stone cloistered walks, 
black iron balconies, and the changing mass of 
exotic green trees and plants. Only one color 
has been avoided—red. There are pinks and 
purples and yellows and blues and oranges in¬ 
numerable, but no sharp reds. 
T HERE are dozens of quaint trees in this patio. 
There is the travellers’ palm which always 
grows North and South, no matter how you plant 
it. There are feathery masses of bamboo, and 
banana and olive and orange and citron trees. 
There are sprawling, oriental banyan trees, and 
the Sacred Bow tree of the Buddhas. There are 
acacia trees, and bourgainvillia vines that are 
almost trees flowering in purple and magenta. 
There are masses of hibiscus in pink and yellow 
and cerise and salmon color, and climbing alaman¬ 
da vines with huge yellow trumpet flowers. 
There are pink flowering oleanders and the pink 
coral bush, and the Japanese snow bush. As for 
the crotons, those bizarre multi-colored plants, 
there are hundreds of varieties. Their variety 
of color is strangely like the gorgeous feathers 
of the macaws and parrots and cockatoos that 
fly in the patio. 
When it comes to the flowers, there is a be¬ 
wildering mass: blue African sage, and orange 
colored Leonotis, and Lion’s tail, and the dwarf 
cuphea with blue flow'ers, and large leaf begonias 
with pink flowers, and blue plumbago and orange 
and yellow lantana, and the bronze acalvpha 
leaf, and blue queen's wreath, with delicate 
violet centers, and forsythia. I can’t remember 
them all. Ferns are planted against the walls. 
Japanese grass is planted between the cracks of 
the stone W'alks. A small bed of old-fashioned 
violets has a place in the sweet-scented corner. 
A little later the annuals will begin—and there 
will be blue daisies, and ageratum in different 
shades of blue, and alyssum in white and laven¬ 
der, and calendulas, and Swan River daisies, and 
yellow and white calk lilies. 
In one corner of the patio under a balcony, 
there is a precious space which the gardener 
calls the sw'eet-scented garden. Here are white and 
yellow', Italian and Mexican, night and day bloom¬ 
ing jasmines; heavy white tuberoses; white 
ginger lilies; white Chinese lilies, and gera¬ 
niums; borderings of alyssum and migno¬ 
nette and wall flow'ers. A few gardenias and 
although they have no perfume, because of their 
rare quality of blossom. A blackgreen back¬ 
ground of orange and lemon and grapefruit trees 
is massed against the wall. 
W HENEVER 1 gaze into tarnished old 
Venetian mirrors I think how marvelous 
they would be if they did not reflect me—if 
instead they reflected those carnival days. Some 
day I shall build a room in two moods: one 
room w'ill be the dim reflection of my dreams, 
of that undiscovered pageantry of dreams that 
lies back of the thin shadowy glass—the other 
will be the mirror of my daily life. And be¬ 
cause it is so easy to build an imaginative 
fantasy, and so hard to employ material things 
—stuffs and words and carpets and illumination 
and such—I shall accomplish my secret room 
with great subtlety and many laws. It will 
be like Bluebeard’s chamber, except that it will 
hold all the delights instead of all the horrors. 
It would be used mostly in the winter, w'hen cur¬ 
tains may be drawn—but in summer only in 
twilight and after dark. 
Old mirrors were thin and fragile—and this 
small secret room of mine must be a thin reflec¬ 
tion of a gay room. It must repeat in attenuation 
what the room it reflects has in spaciousness. 
The outer room—the day room—the usual room— 
may be what I like, what my friends like. It 
must certainly have much of rose-red and white 
and blue and comfortable chairs, and lights and 
flowers and books and magazines and old glass 
and old liquors, and a ceiling high enough for 
spirals of cigarette smoke. As I love perfumes 
so do I abominate incense, but cigarette smoke 
is different, is legitimate. 
T HREE sides of the outer room must be usual. 
The fourth side, the wall behind which lies 
the mystery, is to be made up of squares and ob¬ 
longs of grayed old mirrors that give no reflection. 
There will be a secret spring which I may press 
through which I enter my secret room. • This 
room is long and narrow, with only one great 
window in one narrow wall. In the center of 
one long wall is the fireplace. Opposite it, just 
the distance for comfort, is a great divan with 
high back and high arms, where 
one may lie and dream, or read. 
The couch is just far enough 
from the fire for warmth, and 
there are birch logs for romance 
and warmth. 
The walls of the room are of 
some silvery paper, overhung 
with thin curtains of silver gauze, 
that I may have the feeling of 
reflection with none of the dis¬ 
appointment of its bland, heart¬ 
less, candid truth. The couch 
and the floor are of gray velvet, 
and the narrow space between 
the bed and the hearth is a long 
soft gray rug—of some short 
silvery fur, probably a million 
dollars worth of chinchilla. 
There are a few soft thin satin 
cushions for one’s cheeks to rest 
and many velvet ones for underneath— 
all of grays and silvers. There is no furniture ex¬ 
cept two low tables, where old silver dishes and 
old smoky glass is placed for use; but on each 
side of the chimney piece there are bookshelves 
built to the ceiling, and filled with all the books 
one adores, and over this brilliant tapestry of 
binding is hung a silver gauze curtain, that the 
books also seem a wavering reflection. Over the 
mantel, lighted by a row of old silver candlesticks, 
hangs one picture. The picture will change with 
my moods, but there will always be only one. 
Just now the Virgin with the heavy child and the 
lightsome flowers intrigues me—those pale full 
pink lilies which seem so much more childlike 
than the babe. It is not that it is the most beauti¬ 
ful picture in the world, but that it gives me 
the feeling of a shy dawning—like Sidney Lanier's 
“Were silver pink, 
And had a soul, 
Which soul were shy, 
Which shyness were invisible—” 
RUBY ROSS GOODNOW 
upon, 
