Studio: international art (46.1909)

A rchitectural Gardening.— V.

tages in design which the subject
of a riverside house affords in
this respect, was also mentioned. .!

There can surely be few more
delightful problems that an archi-
tect can be called upon to solve
within the range of domestic
architecture, than that of design-
ing upon a given site and under
given conditions, a summer-house
and garden on the banks of any
one of our English rivers.

The neglect to take advantage
of all the possibilities water affords
in garden design, is by no means
confined to work on the river-
side ; it is usually entirely ignored
where there is a natural running
stream of water actually on or
adjacent to a site. It may some-
times occur that an old brook
with a high hawthorn hedge forms
one of the natural fences, and a
more beautiful and effective one
for the purpose could not be con-
trived • particularly if it should so
happen that it forms the bound-
ary between the approach road
and the entrance side of the
house. Here is an opportunity
for a pleasant little stone or brick
bridge, roughly built, with its
sides decorated with a selection
from the infinite variety of water-
side flowers, which all our rivers
(and notably the Thames) pro-
vide in abundance, covered with a deep arch
formed in the old hedge itself or continued from
it as may be necessary, the whole set centrally
with the entrance door and connected to it by a
white stone-flagged path bordered with flowers.
Some such an idea as this can be easily and
simply effected, and yet the usual method of
dealing with such things has been to straightway
fill up the brook with concrete, to tear up the old
hedge by the roots and build a staring red brick
wall topped with a cast-iron catalogue-railing with
cast-iron gate and posts in the centre to match, and
at a total cost for which the old fence could have
been adapted a dozen times over.

Actual instances in proof of this are by no means
wanting, and the sad thing about it all is that such
vandalism has not been committed through any
desire to destroy the natural beauties of a site for

A RIVERSIDE COTTAGE AND GARDEN

DESIGNED AND DRAWN BY C. E. M ALLOWS, ■ F. R. I. B. A.

any particular practical purpose or from a mere
lust for destroying beautiful things, but rather from
a sort of ingrained conviction that no English-
man’s house is complete until it is surrounded by
a brick wall or a cast-iron railing. This sort of
thing is to be seen in almost any building
operations where new houses are concerned, and
especially in the outskirts of our cities and towns.
The old natural fence is usually the first thing to
be destroyed, whereas for both common-sense and
economical reasons it should be one of the first
things protected and retained. Unhappily, how-
ever, it is a very rare exception to see common-
sense exercised in such a simple matter as this ; so
rare indeed is it that the exceptions almost count
for nothing7

In work of this kind there appears always an
unreasoning and aimless spirit, evidenced every-

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