File:American homes and gardens (1913) (14761716276).jpg

Identifier: americanhomesga101913newy (find matches)
Title: American homes and gardens
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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as beautiful and as permanent as we possibly can.Suburban sections, instead of being merely temporarily oc-cupied until business grows out to them, are becomingsettled in the expectancy that they will con-tinue to be residential sections and beingimproved and built up accordingly. Henceone finds many well-built and artistic houses,surrounded in the majority of cases bylimited ground space, where the ownersideas of garden-scaping have for the mostpart been obtained only from the expansiveand expensive (and often inartistic)estates of the countryside—a model ab-solutely unsuited to his own requirements. THE FIRST LAW OF GARDENING The first law of gardening is that ofproportion. Now the owner of two or oftwenty acres may have room for a littleof everything in his layout—and as theperson who plans it for him is likely to bethe one who is selling him the plants,shrubs and trees for the job, he is verylikely to get a little of everything. But you 154 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS May, 1913
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Shrubbery, a massing of flowers and a garden seat arranged in (and I purposely make this personal), with fifty or a hun-dred feet frontage and a depth of a hundred or possiblytwo hundred, or (if you are so fortunate), with doubleor treble those figures, you have an entirely different prob-lem to solve—and incidentally one in which you will prob-ably take a great deal more personal pleasure than theowner of the twenty acres before mentioned. As yourcanvas is so limited that you cannot plan to spread thereona full size landscape, you are under the necessity of doingone of two things, either taking a small section full size,or a more inclusive composition on a very greatly reducedscale. The Japanese are the only people who have success-fully attempted to follow the latter course. Their miniaturegardens and landscapes are marvels of beautiful art. Theyare also marvels of an infinite patience and a technical skillwhich in this country we have not yet begun to dream ofattaining. Therefore

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