Garden city

“ Let me here introduce a very rough diagram, representing, as I conceive, the true principle on which all towns should grow. Garden City has, we will suppose, grown until it has reached a population of 32,000. How shall it grow? How shall it provide for the needs of others who will be attracted by its numerous advantages? Shall it build on the zone of agricultural land which is around it, and thus for ever destroy its right to be called a "Garden City"? ”

“ In an Eastern city a lovely garden flourished, whose beauty and luxuriance awakened much admiration. It was the owner's greatest pleasure to watch its growth, as leaf, flower, and tree seemed daily to unfold to brighter bloom. ”

“ There never was a finer situation for the public garden of a great city. Nothing is wanting but to cut winding paths through it, leaving the woods as they now are, and introducing here and there a jet from the Croton aqueduct, the streams from which would make their own waterfalls over the rocks, and keep the brooks running through the place always fresh and full.... ”

“ It was the custom of the better sort of citizens to have gardens outside the City, each with its own garden-house, in some cases a mere arbor, but in others a house for residence in the summer months. ”

“ Such suburbs as Brookline near Boston, Garden City and Morristown near New York, Guilford at Baltimore, Germantown near Philadelphia and many places on the Pacific Coast show what can be done to transform an otherwise indifferent landscape into a beauty spot. While these are on the whole the homes of the wealthy, money is not what has made them, for thousands of cottage gardens in England are just as beautiful and have been made by people who live a busy industrial life, but whose desire for beautiful surroundings makes them spend their brief leisure in tending their flowers. ”

“ There is a large garden in this city—it is, in fact, a part of the city proper. It was once a beautiful faubourg, now known as the Garden District, where the people live outdoors in a fine old aristocratic way, and where all the beauty in nature seen in the other sections of the city seems to be outdone. Very many rare old homes are in this garden region, with its deep hedges and ample grounds, inclosed in high stone walls, and a wealth of flowers and noble courts and an abounding hospitality. But what, after all, are houses to a people that lives outdoors? ”

“ Its highest results need hardly be described; they are seen in all our great public gardens; our London and many other city parks show them in the shape of beds filled with vast quantities of flowers, covering the ground frequently in a showy way, or in a repulsively gaudy manner: nearly every private garden is taken possession of by the same things. ”

“ These people must conduct their business elsewhere, he thought—underground, perhaps, leaving the surface for leisure and recreation. Garden City indeed! Life must be pleasant here—and it would soon be his! ”

“ I had no idea that any city contained so many beautiful homes and flower gardens until I took a ride into the suburbs of this city. Almost every home, or villa, has a rose garden and there must be many wealthy people for it takes a tremendous amount of labor to keep these wonderful flower gardens in such good order. ”

“ Thorough sanitary and remedial action in the houses that we have; and then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their streams and walled round, so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street within and the open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly fresh air and grass and sight of far horizon might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. ”

“ Our excursion of to-day took us to another of those exquisite drives in the neighborhood of the city, always along the harbor or some inlet of it, always in sight of the mountains, always bordered by pretty country houses and gardens. The Botanical Garden is about eight miles from the centre of the town. It is beautiful, because the situation is admirably well chosen, and because anything 61that calls itself a garden can hardly fail to be beautiful in a climate where growth is so luxuriant. ”

“ They are set well back from the street, leaving room for a flower garden, while almost every one has a thrifty orchard at the sides and around the back. The gardens are laid out with great simplicity, indicating love for flowers by people comparatively poor, rather than deliberate efforts of the rich for showy artistic effects. ”

“ To this day there is something in a square that no other thoroughfare has; a sort of measured enclosedness, a finished privacy. The garden in the middle that none enter save lovers and cats, a garden sometimes sooty, sometimes kept trim by a gardener born old, is cut off from the rough movement of the city. ”

“ Next day, not before, spread a newspaper and turn the cardboard over so that the loose grass falls away on to the paper. Fasten down your grass plot in a suitable place in your city and build a little red brick wall round it with a little arched gateway, and you will have a neat and charming enclosed garden. For garden beds dark-coloured tobacco makes good mould, and shows up your little rose-trees. ”

“ In the crowded city, among the poorest houses, one often sees, in the corner of a little earth-area that comes between the sill and [pg 275] the raised floor, a miniature garden made in some shallow box, or even on the ground itself. In gardens of any pretensions, a little pond or sheet of water of irregular outline is an indispensable feature. If a brook can be turned to run through the garden, one of the great charms is attained ”

“ I know nothing more suggestive of persistence and of sad sentiment than the view often seen in forlorn city enclosures, as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of an aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge growing in the beaten earth of a squalid back yard, surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once a fair garden there grew ”

“ They were as motionless as statues; neither looked up as our footfall struck along the cobbles; it was an exciting moment in the game.
[Illustration: A STREET IN COUTANCES—EGLISE SAINT-PIERRE]
Below these old houses stretched the public gardens. Here also there was a great stillness. For us alone the rose gardens bloomed, the tropical trees were shivering, and the palms were making a night of shade for wide acres of turf. Rarely does a city boast of such a garden. ”

“ But the City Fathers have awakened to the fact, that those precipitous bluffs can be made highly ornamental, by green sod and trees and flowers. A great park plan has been projected for all those curving spaces, and ere long the city will be made unique and beautiful by those winding, aspiring, and splendid plantations, out of which the homes, the churches, and public buildings will rise as from a garden.
In our brief stay we called on our dear and old-time friend, the Rev. ”

“ The City Garden CHILDREN who live in the city usually have so little ground that they are not often encouraged to attempt gardening.
Even in the tiny 9 x 12 foot city yard, provided it has sunshine during some part of the day, a surprising variety of plants may be grown. ”

“ The gardens are beautifully laid out in pleasure-grounds, broad walks, groves, flower gardens, greensward, &c.—a pleasing combination of the natural and artificial; the public may walk where they wish; they may saunter here and there; they may lie down or walk on the greensward, only they must not pluck the flowers or break the trees and plants; the garden is a perfect wealth of floral treasures. Seventy-five of its three hundred and fifty acres are devoted to the Botanic Gardens, with different hot-houses for rare and tropical plants, all open to the public. ”

“ Ever and anon he passes by some dwelling where the charms of culture have been added to the charms of Nature. By kind treatment the grass-plat before the door has become a refreshing piece of verdure. By careful pruning and training the trees on the lawn have become objects of beauty, and cast their graceful shadows over the velvety greensward beneath. The woodbine tastefully trained over the porch, the flower-bed in the yard brilliant with flowers, and the garden and the fruit orchard in the field, all tend to cheer and sanctify human life in such an abode. ”

“ What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.
Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbor as well where my vessels may ride.
Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on the top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lay safe in the bay.
This one is sailing and that one is moored:
[94] ”

“ From these little white houses, perched in picturesque situations among evergreen woods and groves of fruit-trees, the inhabitants enjoy a gay and delightful prospect of the sea; while to those who sail along the shore these woods, villas, and gardens present a no less cheerful and animated scene. The springs which rise in these hills, and confer beauty and fertility upon the whole landscape, likewise furnish the city with an abundance of excellent water, which is conveyed to the public fountains through a long course of pipes and conduits. ”

“ Let us move on now up the clean stone street, up, and up, and up, passing many a walled recess where sparkling jets of water fill the jars brought to the fountain by barefooted girls,—up and on, on and up, past votive shrines—les chapelles—and high-walled gardens, coming finally to the broad avenue leading to the Botanical Garden,—the same road from which we were so glad to escape the night before. ”

“ The old building still stands among wild-flowers and hay, within sight of the river bend; the deserted garden is unfenced, and the roses, straggling in the field, mingle their petals with the clover and poppies that spring luxuriantly. ”

“ There is a little rivulet, neatly faced with stone, runs through every street, by which they can cool the streets or water their gardens when they please. The whole town is extremely well paved. Their gardens are full of noble orange-trees and floripondies, with all sort of flowers, which perfume the houses and even the whole city. ”

“ The effect of the whole is certainly grand; many a little town would not cover so much ground as this place, which consists of a number of houses and buildings, kiosks, and summer-houses, surrounded with plantains and cypress-trees, the latter half hidden amid gardens and arbours. Everywhere there is a total want of symmetry and taste. I saw something of the garden, walked through the first and second courtyard, and even peeped into the third. ”

“ The roofs of English houses are not shaped well for gardening, and if there happen to be a back-yard, it is often more like a well than a garden; not a dripping well lined with fern and soft with moss, but a well walled round with smoke-black bricks, and not much of a sky above it. Yet garden-lovers do make their little plots somehow, even in London’s heart, and live there happily tending their flowers. ”

“ I really believe, sir, that the literature of the garden, so abundant everywhere, is written in the interest of suburban land-owners. The inviting one-sided picture so persistently held up is only a covert bit of advertising, intended to seduce away happy cockneys of the town—men supremely contented with their attics, their promenades in Fifth Avenue, their visits to Central Park, where all is arranged for them without their labor or concern, their evenings at the music gardens, their soft morning slumbers, which know no dreadful chills and dews! ”

“ Even those less fortunate individuals, who are doomed to pass their lives in the midst of din and traffic, contrive to have something that shall remind them of the green aspect of nature. In the most dark and dingy quarters of the city, the drawing-room window resembles frequently a bank of flowers; every spot capable of vegetation has its grass-plot and flower-bed; and every square its mimic park, laid out with picturesque taste, and gleaming with refreshing verdure. ”

“ Beyond the palace began the Community garden, a large square in the centre of the village filled with flowers and fruit adorned with arbors and cedar-trees clipped in the form of birds, and enriched with an old-style greenhouse whose sliding glasses were viewed with admiration by the visitors of thirty years ago, who sent their choice plants thither from far and near to be tended through the long, cold lake-country winters. ”

“ Where one garden boasts little but old packing-cases, drying linen, a few stalks of hollyhocks, and one or two giant sunflowers, the very next will show borders full of all varieties of flowers in season, an eloquent picture of what may be done with a little trouble. The consolation and pleasure these little town gardens give is out of all proportion to their size. The man who can come home to a villa, however badly built and hideous, and it often appears that some competition in ugliness has won suburban prizes, can find a delight all good gardeners know in working his plot of land. ”

“ When you turn the corner from this somewhat blank and low but imposing line you come upon the garden-front, which is of the livelier French order of architecture, with long windows, and many of them. The gardens are the pride of the house. These are arranged in terraces and parterres, brilliant with flowers, and there is even an elaborate system of water-works, a little out of order now, and a few statues here and there, half covered with lichens, yet not unworthy of better preservation. ”