A natural-looking garden is usually the preferred style. One thing that can really disrupt this effect is the little trellis placed on the lawn for the exhibition of climbing plants. This always gives a note of discord amidst natural or semi-natural elements; a trellis placed like this simply cannot be made to look good.

Climbers on the porches and walls or on old tree trunks, or clambering freely over the tops of bushes, give a more efficient expression of naturalness than almost any other material available. This is probably because these artificial materials break so forcibly upon the quietness of the garden.

The summer house, which can be very charming on certain grounds, can be made to appear as the very epitome of ugliness. Summer houses have many good points; rustic arbors and shady garden seats. Unfortunately, these are points at which naturalness is often lost, and so they require careful treatment and good taste to adapt them to the best interests of a whole, natural composition.

If you want to add in certain artificial elements but are afraid that it will take away from the overall effect, there are alternatives to any object that are more subtle. For instance, a wall water fountain is much less conspicuous than the traditional garden fountain, but just as beautiful.

Bad fences are worthy of separate mention. First of all, practically all fences are bad, considered merely as items in a garden composition in the natural style. Yet there are wonderful degrees of badness among fences.

Good, well kept horticultural hedges of privets, roses, spiraeas, diervillas, arbor vitses, and other plants suitable for these special purposes are at least bearable. In some cases they are actually quite nice.

A hedge may be continuous and yet irregular, broadening in one place, bending in another, and further along merging into a larger group of trees and shrubs. In this way it may serve the purposes of a fence without marring the naturalness sought.

But what about the picket and board fences that used to be so common among suburban homes? What about the frenzy of iron work which stands between us and the grounds we would so gladly admire? All natural aspect is lost with this.

These fences do, however, serve a purpose. They are the answer to a want keen and urgent in the ordinary home owner's heart; a desire for seclusion and privacy and the unmolested and unobserved enjoyment of surroundings. This seclusion is worth striving for in the garden plan; but if naturalness is desired, there are other ways to achieve this.

Some have tried to sink the fences in deep ditches, the banks of which were given special treatment to conceal the whole. This is impractical, and requires quite a bit of work. The effect is not very satisfactory, either.

Pure white is not a color common in nature, and the dazzling reflection from extended white surfaces reveals an artificiality which is glaring in a double sense. While white paint and whitewash have many practical uses, and in appropriate surroundings please the eye, they should not be used in a natural setting.

There are many unnatural methods of plant training in vogue, which are obviously incompatible with natural methods. Even so, we constantly find them intermingled with purely natural objects, to the obvious detriment of both. The junipers, boxes, arbor vitaes and similar plants trimmed into smooth cones, vases, globes and more complex combinations illustrate this method.

Weeping tops grafted on straight, upright trunks belong to the same class. Others might be mentioned, some good and some bad in themselves, but all agreeing in the certainty with which they spoil the unity of any place in which informal treatment is essayed.