International studio (35.1908)

Relation of the Garden to the House

The relation of the garden
TO THE HOUSE
BY AYMAR EMBURY, II
To the architect a “garden” means
not alone a plot of ground covered with flowers or
vegetables, but the whole arrangement of walks,
trees, flowers, statuary, walls and seats which goes
to make a picturesque setting for the house. It
serves a double function. It is a place to walk and
talk and sit out of doors among beautiful things
and a setting for the house.
Always the garden is an intermediate stage be-
tween the purely artificial house and its purely nat-
ural surroundings; it breathes a dual life, compact
of art and nature, mingled in a nice proportion to fit
the site and the syle of the house, varying from the
formality of the classic gardens filled with walls and
walks and summer houses shown here by examples
from Mr. Platt’s work to the extremely simple and
natural materials employed by Messrs. Myron Hunt
and Elmer Grey. Very often a pool is used which,
whether for water-flowers, or for the interest of the
reflection, or simply from the love of water, seems
almost necessary to the complete garden, and if em-
ployed as a whole central motive, as in the Cochran
and Bartlett houses, or as a little fountain, or as a
frontispiece to a pergola, it is always its own suffi-
cient reason.
The garden bears to the exterior of the house the
same relation that the furniture does to the interior.
Without it the house, however good may be its de-
sign, looks bare and unlivable; the “gardening”
adds intimacy and vitality to the house. The gar-
den does not need to be formal or even artificial to
produce this effect; a little care in the selection of
the site, so that the natural slope of the land and
what old trees there may be blend into an artistic
composition, will in many cases produce results
superior to what is possible by artificial means.
These simple elements with a little pool for water
plants are all that Mr. Myron Hunt has chosen to
employ in his own California home, marking the en-
trance by two arbor-vitae; yet the most extravagant
use of artificial features could not be more appro-
priate to the simple and comfortable type of house
he has chosen to live in. While the use of plant
life in such profusion so close to the house might
not be desirable in more northern and colder cli-
mates than that of California, in its place it seems to
near perfection. The same generous use of vines
is apparent in Dr. Cochran’s house, but a somewhat
more formal treatment of the water garden and
shrubs is employed, with not less effect. In neither

one of these two examples is a flower to be seen,
and yet they are very truly gardens.
The need of some intermediary step between the
house and the surroundings has produced a widely
different result in the garden of the Bartlett house.
Here are a house and a studio separated by a little
space. To connect them Mr. Howard Shaw em-
ploys a garden, which, joining two masonry struc-.
tures, requires many more built features than either
of the two houses spoken of above. The heavy
woodland around, too, seems to need a stronger
barrier against it than any simple row of trees would
furnish. Thus inevitably, though with conscious
art, was evolved the lovely sunny open space, rich
with color and filled with cheerfulness in the midst
of the dark, high foliage of the forest growth around.
Here are a multitude of flowers placed with precise
appreciation of the proper heights and forms, and
lest in winter the garden may appear naked and
bare are used many evergreen shrubs.
To secure to the garden its fitting seclusion a
boundary of some sort is necessary. This is usually
some natural line, strengthened by artificial means.
For instance, the garden of the Bartlett house is
. bounded at its two ends by the house and by the
studio, and at the sides by the lines of trees and the
garden walls. The pergola is a very beautiful way
of forming a boundary or termination to a garden,
often reinforced by pavilions at its extremities, or
with its center marked by some feature like the Ca-
sino at Faulkner Farm. This pergola lends itself
most naturally to the most formal type of gardening,
whose greatest exponent in this country is probably
Mr. Charles A. Platt, and two views of his most
successful work are reproduced here.
Founded upon the old Roman and later Italian
style of the gardens, Mr. Platt’s work is conspicuous
for a purity and freedom of treatment which marks
it as living design and not mere copying. To ade-
quately show the wealth of beauty of which his
work is full would take many pages of illustrations,
and those used here are chosen because they show in
their highest development two features of garden
architecture—the casino, or open-air tearoom, and
the summer houses which form so desirable an ac-
companiment to every large garden.
Gardens of this type are beyond the reach of most
of us and would be inappropriate to the average
house. Yet the underlying motive can and should
be used in every country place, however small; size
is not an essential to charm, for, as Ben Jonson
says,
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in small measures life may perfect be.

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