J u n e 
19 2 3 
43 
The 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
BULLETIN BOARD 
T HERE comes a time, in the development of 
a country estate or a fine garden, when it 
no longer belongs entirely to the owner. 
When it has approached perfection, when it has 
become a feast for the eyes, then, oddly enough, 
it grows bigger than any owner’s capacity for 
enjoyment. Like the man in the parable who 
made a great feast; it was more than he alone 
could eat, so he sent out to the highways and 
byways and compelled people to come in. 
Scattered about this country are innumerable 
fine gardens and country estates which, at cer¬ 
tain seasons of the year, reach this point of per¬ 
fection. At such times the gates should be 
opened to the public. In the neighborhood of 
Charleston, S. C., for example, are three great 
azalea gardens—The Oaks at Goose Creek, the 
Middleton Gardens and the magnificent Magnolia 
Gardens. At azalea and magnolia blooming time 
these gardens are on public display and a nominal 
admission fee of a dollar or a dollar and a half 
is charged. The price keeps out the riff-raff and 
gives a greater sense of value to the visitors than 
if admission were free. 
The Westchester Country Society for the Pre¬ 
vention of Cruelty to Children has developed this 
idea into a laudable means of raising money for 
its charity. Owners of large gardens in the 
neighborhood set aside a day for visitors and an 
admission fee is charged, the money going to 
the society. Why couldn’t this be carried out 
in all neighborhoods where there are extensive 
private gardens? 
We are wondering, too, if the owners of large 
and beautiful estates ever think to send a fleet 
of motors to some nearby hospital and bring out 
the convalescents for a day in the garden? Or 
a young army of crippled children? Or, for 
that matter, why they can’t arrange for seasonal 
visits of city school children ? The children 
could be taken over the place by gardeners and 
attendants and the various trees and flowers ex¬ 
plained. It would have a decided educational 
value, give immense pleasure to the children and, 
doubtless, immense pleasure to the owners. 
F ARMING, at best, is a hard life. There are 
fields to plow and cultivate and crops to har¬ 
vest and every now and then the Govern¬ 
ment forgets that farmers exist and neglects them 
in legislation. But it has its compensations. The 
farmer lives an open air life, he gets plenty of fresh 
air, eggs and milk and exercise and he doesn’t 
have to worry much about stylish clothes. Bet¬ 
ter roads and the radio have given him contact 
with the big world. But the most amusing phase 
of farm life that has come to our attention for 
a long time is the farmer in his new role of an¬ 
tique dealer. It seems that presentable reproduc¬ 
tions of antique furniture, pottery and glassware 
are being made wholesale and the trade has 
found a brisk market in the rural sections. The 
farmer now hauls down from his attic “antiques” 
with dusty pedigrees that he sells to gullible 
motorists from the big cities for a profitable 
consideration. 
A NOTHER fine old garden lover has passed. 
In the- death of the Rev. William Wilks at 
Shirley, England, gardeners everywhere 
have lost a great friend. Vicar for thirty-three 
years in this little hamlet near Croydon, he used 
his leisure to making a remarkable garden and 
creating, among other things, the race of Shirley 
poppies which bears the name of the town in 
which he lived and labored for so long a time. He 
was also responsible for much of the growth of 
the Royal Horticultural Society. Elected a Fel¬ 
low of this association at the early age of twenty- 
three, he found the society in sore straits. In 
1888 he became its secretary, and from the 
meagre membership of a thousand he built it up 
until today it numbers 16,000. Mr. Wilks’ love 
for gardening seems to have been an hereditary 
gift; both his grandfather and father were en¬ 
gaged in horticulture. 
T HE later 18th Century was one in which 
real perfection of decorative art was 
achieved—a perfection, it is true, which be¬ 
came mechanical and stereotyped almost as soon 
as it was arrived at, but a genuine perfection 
none the less. It was a perfection resulting, not 
from the inspiration of any single outstanding 
genius, but rather from the combined efforts of 
a number of talented men working within a 
very good tradition and supported by patrons of 
knowledge and refined taste. A brilliant ele¬ 
gance characterizes every aspect of decorative 
art during this period. From the general design 
of the mansion down to the door handles and 
the keyholes, from the staircase to the furniture, 
from the plasterw-ork of the ceilings to the car¬ 
pets on the floors, everything was “right”, both 
in itself and in relation to everything else. These 
men of talent w'ho worked in a good tradition, 
these tasteful patrons, were true artists inasmuch 
as they valued unity of style and took the pains 
to achieve it. 
Living in an age of eclecticism, we know too 
much about all styles to practice any one of them 
for long. But if we cannot accept any single 
tradition as our ancestors did, we can at least 
insure that there shall be a certain unity of con¬ 
ception within each of our various essays in 
style. The architects of the late 18th Century 
were almost as a matter of course designers of 
furniture, pattern makers, and general decora¬ 
tors. The house and all that was in it was very 
often designed by one man. The example of 
our ancestors is worthy of being more generally 
followed than it is today. It seems an extra¬ 
ordinary thing that architects should ever have 
left to other people the designing of the furni¬ 
ture that is to stand in their houses. 
For his new architecture Robert Adam de¬ 
signed—or rather persuaded the great cabinet¬ 
makers of his day to design—a new kind of 
furniture, as elegant and classically refined as 
his buildings. It was good furniture—not merely 
in itself, but because it was perfectly fitted to 
its surroundings. 
Do we not need a new Adam to help us out 
of the mire? 
O N THE Bulletin Board of the March issue 
we posted the notice of the delightful woman 
who said that for some years she had read 
herself to sleep at night with Thomas a Kempis 
and a seed catalog. Now a reader has written us 
to the effect that she uses House & Garden to rid 
herself of nightmares. She was bothered with 
this affliction for some time. Then she sub¬ 
scribed to the magazine and took to reading 
it before she went to sleep. She—but we will 
let her tell her own story—“To my surprise and 
pleasure my dreams became filled with views 
of picturesque cottages and charming country 
homes. In my visions I have seen such unique 
and lovely designs that they would have made 
my fortune could I have remembered them on 
waking—such gables, windows, roofs, verandahs 
floated into my dream consciousness, the like of 
which I have never seen in reality.” 
Well, we knew House & Garden served a lot 
of purposes, practical and esthetic, but never be¬ 
fore has it been accused of being a sedative. 
E NGLAND has always been famous for its 
parson gardeners. While the leisure of coun¬ 
try life may have afforded them more op¬ 
portunity to practise this art than was given men 
in other professions, we are inclined to believe 
that these country clergy took it up as part of 
their duty, an inheritance from monastic days 
when vegetable gardening and the raising of herbs 
for medicine were necessary elements in the con¬ 
ventual day’s work. We are not so fortunate 
in this country, although we doubtless have 
many parson gardeners. The Magnolia Gardens 
near Charleston, perhaps the greatest in the 
world, were made by a parson, the Rev. John 
Grimke Drayton; in the rose field today we have 
such active workers as Dr. Edmund M. Wills 
of Syracuse and Father Schoener of Santa Barbara. 
Some of our suburban and country parsons, in 
an eagerness to be considered men among men, 
plunge into golf and tennis. Wouldn’t they be 
considered just as manly if they took up gar¬ 
dening? 
O F THE architects whose work is shown in 
this issue, Mellor, Meigs & Howe practise 
in Philadelphia, Herbert Baker is in London, 
Pierpont & Walter S. Davis in California, Ed¬ 
ward P. Delk in Kansas City, and in New York, 
Edward C. Dean, H. T. Lindeberg, Richard H. 
Dana and Verna Cook Salomonsky. 
Examples of the work of four landscape archi¬ 
tects help in the illustrations of this number— 
Prentice Sanger, Elsa Rehmann, Ellen Shipman 
and Elizabeth Leonard Strang. Of these, the 
first three are located in New York and the last 
in Massachusetts. 
Of the decorators, who number six in this 
issue, Thedlow, W. &. J. Sloane, Helen Criss, 
Harry Mever, Miss Sparks are New York deco¬ 
rators, and Miss Gheen, Inc. is in both New 
York and Chicago. 
Samuel Fraser, who writes on the opportuni¬ 
ties awaiting the American amateur gardener, 
is a well-known horticultural authority, and is 
especially reputed for his work with fruit. 
El Marques de San Francisco, who contributes 
the article on old Mexican gardens, is a man of 
letters residing in Mexico City. 
