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Page 40
As to colour in gardens. Flowers in masses are mighty strong
colour, and if not used with a great deal of caution are very
destructive to pleasure in gardening. On the whole, I think the
best and safest plan is to mix up your flowers, and rather eschew
great masses of colour--in combination I mean. But there are some
flowers (inventions of men, i.e. florists) which are bad colour
altogether, and not to be used at all. Scarlet geraniums, for
instance, or the yellow calceolaria, which indeed are not uncommonly
grown together profusely, in order, I suppose, to show that even
flowers can be thoroughly ugly.
Another thing also much too commonly seen is an aberration of the
human mind, which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you
of. It is technically called carpet-gardening. Need I explain it
further? I had rather not, for when I think of it even when I am
quite alone I blush with shame at the thought.
I am afraid it is specially necessary in these days when making the
best of it is a hard job, and when the ordinary iron hurdles are so
common and so destructive of any kind of beauty in a garden, to say
when you fence anything in a garden use a live hedge, or stones set
flatwise (as they do in some parts of the Cotswold country), or
timber, or wattle, or, in short, anything but iron. {10}
And now to sum up as to a garden. Large or small, it should look
both orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outside
world. It should by no means imitate either the wilfulness or the
wildness of Nature, but should look like a thing never to be seen
except near a house. It should, in fact, look like a part of the
house. It follows from this that no private pleasure-garden should
be very big, and a public garden should be divided and made to look
like so many flower-closes in a meadow, or a wood, or amidst the
pavement.
It will be a key to right thinking about gardens if you consider in
what kind of places a garden is most desired. In a very beautiful
country, especially if it be mountainous, we can do without it well
enough; whereas in a flat and dull country we crave after it, and
there it is often the very making of the homestead. While in great
towns, gardens, both private and public, are positive necessities if
the citizens are to live reasonable and healthy lives in body and
mind.
So much for the garden, of which, since I have said that it ought to
be part of the house, I hope I have not spoken too much.
Now, as to the outside of our makeshift house, I fear it is too ugly
to keep us long. Let what painting you have to do about it be as
simple as possible, and be chiefly white or whitish; for when a
building is ugly in form it will bear no decoration, and to mark its
parts by varying colour will be the way to bring out its ugliness.
So I don't advise you to paint your houses blood-red and chocolate
with white facings, as seems to be getting the fashion in some parts
of London. You should, however, always paint your sash-bars and
window-frames white to break up the dreary space of window somewhat.
The only other thing I have to say, is to warn you against using at
all a hot brownish-red, which some decorators are very fond of.
Till some one invents a better name for it, let us call it cockroach
colour, and have naught to do with it.
So we have got to the inside of our house, and are in the room we
are to live in, call it by what name you will. As to its
proportions, it will be great luck indeed in an ordinary modern
house if they are tolerable; but let us hope for the best. If it is
to be well proportioned, one of its parts, either its height,
length, or breadth, ought to exceed the others, or be marked
somehow. If it be square or so nearly as to seem so, it should not
be high; if it be long and narrow, it might be high without any
harm, but yet would be more interesting low; whereas if it be an
obvious but moderate oblong on plan, great height will be decidedly
good.
As to the parts of a room that we have to think of, they are wall,
ceiling, floor, windows and doors, fireplace, and movables. Of
these the wall is of so much the most importance to a decorator, and
will lead us so far a-field that I will mostly clear off the other
parts first, as to the mere arrangement of them, asking you
meanwhile to understand that the greater part of what I shall be
saying as to the design of the patterns for the wall, I consider
more or less applicable to patterns everywhere.
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