As we learn more and more about the art of living outdoors, we realize the importance of tying our houses to our gardens. Many contemporary houses have been planned with this idea in mind.
The rooms flow into the outdoor areas, so there is never a feeling of being shut in. A sense of spaciousness and freedom has been achieved.
What, on the other hand, can be done with older houses built before World War II? Look at a “conventional” house set squarely on a suburban lot.
The grounds have been decorated with the usual assortment of shrubs, and the lawn is well cared for. Yet there is no definite connection with the interior of the house.
When you go in the front door, you are in. Just as, when you depart, you are oat.
The Window Problem
There is more to the problem than the walls. The windows are usually small.
To make it worse, they are apt to be so heavily hung with curtains, drapes, and valances that they obscure the vision almost as much as the walls themselves. This is an attempt to achieve privacy.
Privacy can and should be provided, not within the house but from the property line. So whether you use a hedge, a fence, trees, or a wall, keep the barrier to the lot’s perimeter.
The next step is to replace heavy drapes with thin curtains. Better still, why not tie them back to allow as much view as possible?
If you can enlarge the windows or replace some with glass doors, the feeling of spaciousness will be even greater.
During the past decade, we have had a craze for picture windows. Curiously enough, the initial idea has yet to be lost in the attempt to include one of these broad expanses of glass in nearly every domicile.
Most of them appear on the fronts of houses. What kind of “picture” do you have here—the sight of motor traffic, the arrival of the postman, and the passing of strangers?
Furthermore, placing some tamp in the center of the glass area is common practice, eliminating the precise function the window is supposed to serve.
A picture window is an ideal means of gaining what we desire if it is properly located. Place one, in your mind’s eye, in the living room of your own home, perhaps facing the side of your property.
Make the sill low enough so there will be no temptation to place a chair or table in the ivy. Keep the thinnest of curtains to the edge of the glass, using them only to soften the harsh outline of the frame.
Then, imagine planting roses against an attractive background at the property line. Finally, consider a mass of that rich, red grandiflora rose Carrousel interplanted with delphiniums and lilies.
Another delightful combination might be a mass of your favorite bright-pink hybrid tea or floribunda rose, with phlox Miss Litigant in the middle ground and mounds of The Fairy rose in the foreground, liberally sprinkled with clusters of pink flowers all season long. Now connect the window and the roses with a carpet of lawn.
Sliding Glass Panels
Another way to break the artificial barrier of walls is to develop a terrace as an intermediate step between the house and the garden.
French doors leading to the terrace may be used as an effective link. Better yet, if they can be fitted to the style of your house, you can use sliding glass panels for doors.
Make the terrace level slightly below the floor so there is the least possible feeling of change as you pass in and out.
From the terrace to the garden, make the steps broad and no higher than necessary, making the transition from one area to another easy. By now, you have the basic idea and can elaborate on it according to your taste and desires.
For too long, we have depended on several kinds of evergreens for use around our houses. To be sure, the variations of green are pleasing, but they are mostly neutral.
Using Color Scheme
Color is being used lavishly on practically everything we use today. Our radios, refrigerators, kitchen ranges, automobiles, and furnishings reflect the strong trend toward decorator colors.
If our gardens are to be as lively as the house we live in, why not make greater use of colorful shrubs as an added link between indoors and outdoors?
For example, by extending the dining room’s color scheme into an outdoor living area adjoining, both areas will be enhanced.
Roses are ideal plants for this purpose because of their wide range of colors and their long bloom season.
In the perennial border, they lend themselves to many striking combinations. Check your catalogs for other yellows beyond the universally accepted Eclipse, Lowell Thomas, Golden Masterpiece, and Yellow Pinocchio to go with greens, browns, and yellows in the house.
Daylilies, especially some of the older, soft, yellow varieties, will go well with these, particularly if you use plenty of white and possibly a few purple verbenas for spice.
Among the pink varieties, the choices are legion. You may prefer your list to mine:
- Betty Prior
- Show Girl
- The Doctor
- First Love
- Picture
- Dainty Bess
Add peonies, phlox, chrysanthemums, and the blues of delphiniums, platycodons, and asters to give you the materials for painting a hundred pictures.
Similarly, you may go through the list of red roses, whites, and blends to carry out or complement almost any color scheme in your house.
Plant Them with Shrubs
In the shrub border, too, roses can have a dominant place. Foremost in my mind is the new and truly ever-blooming Golden Wings, developed by Roy Shepherd of Medina, Ohio.
Less generous in bloom are the other yellows; Harrison’s Yellow, Rosa Klingons, and Fruchling’s Gold, but all of them are decidedly worthwhile.
Be aware of strong growing rugosas, such as Sir Thomas Lipton, a noticeably fragrant double invite, and Mrs. Anthony Waterer, the deepest deep reds. Hybrid musks, such as the new Will Scarlet, should be addressed.
In the south, the tea roses play a big part, for they soon develop into large shrubs with a wealth of bloom. This list could be greatly extended without exhausting the possibilities.
For Hedges
Let us also remember roses for hedges. For a small hedge, up to 3’ feet, The Fairy seems to have no peer. Its dark, glossy foliage is the first to appear in the spring and stays in good condition until late.
The growth is dense, and plants are covered with pink blooms carried in large clusters over a long period.
For a taller effect, you will look far to find a better variety than Betty Prior. Single pink blooms appear throughout the summer and fall in gratifying numbers.
The height of this variety varies considerably, ranging from three and ½’ to 5’ feet or more.
Wide other varieties of all classes are ideal for hedges. Random ‘sampling would include Peace, Buccaneer, Carrousel, Baby Blaze, Yellow Pinocchio, Fashion, and Masquerade.
If these outdoor extensions of inside rooms are to be fully effective, they should follow, to some extent, the divisions of the interior arrangement.
There is bound to be sonic overlapping of view from adjacent windows, even if they are located in different rooms. However, compositions and color schemes designed for a specific room can be linked to that area by using the garden’s bays, hedges, or walls.
44659 by Dr. Fred J. Nisbet