An American Ideal in Gardening
The swiftly developing ideal of designing and furnishing the grounds about the home so they will be livable as well as beautiful reveals the desire to get the most out of our daily living. We all wish for the largest degree of comfort, relaxation, rest and recreation that our own grounds can give us.
Due to this concept of the potential usefulness of outdoor living, we are making our yards beautiful by planting trees, shrubs and flowers. Yards are also more livable with proper accessorizing. Never before have shops and department stores shown such variety of beautiful furnishings for outdoor living as are currently displayed. The pleasures of relaxing on one's own grounds, among beautiful trees and flowers, are becoming widespread for the first time in our nation's history.
This, then, is the ideal of America today -- to make the yard something more than a setting for the house. The yard about any home can be made into an outdoor living room, affording a charming background for the whole family and an ideal spot for social get-togethers where the family can lunch during the warm summer days in the privacy of their own natural space. There can be no other living spaces of greater or more varied charm than the “rooms” outdoors. Few yards are so small that the owners cannot enjoy the gracious living that attractive grounds engender. After all, we can use but a small portion of our grounds at a time and the average home lot is large enough to satisfy the social and recreational needs of the family.
Outdoor living rooms become especially valuable for children. In addition to providing just the right sort of a playground, it offers a wonderful source of education. Children discover that plants, like little boys and girls, need water, food and sunshine if they are to grow and thrive. They learn the names and habits of trees and flowers. Children come to know the varieties of birds, their appearance, their songs and their friendliness when well treated. Children also learn to appreciate garden features such as pools, fountains and charming gateways. In many ways, children learn valuable lessons from a garden and outdoor living room. Mother Nature, after all, is the best teacher.
The back yard of the past was not an especially attractive picture. An enchanter's wand has changed this dismal crayon into a cheerful picture glowing with all the color of Mother Nature's palette. No large expenditure of money is required for the practicalities of an outdoor living room. Even the work of doing it turns out not to be irksome but rather a labor of love. And we find willing and sturdy helpers in the warm sun, gentle rain and the fertile soil. After they have wrought so marvelously for one season they always promise, "We'll come and help you make your outdoor living room beautiful again next year."
With a little planning, a soft green grass carpet comes to flourish where the brown patches struggled before. Here the children romp and play with little chance of severe bumps. Vines, often bearing flowers or fruit, climb over bare exposures of wood and brick, softening harsh architectural details, shading a porch, or hiding the sight of an ugly feature -- such as a telephone pole, a neighboring building or a garbage enclosure.
Designing and choosing the proper location of an outdoor living room is like charting a voyage into a new world. Unfamiliar wavy lines on a piece of paper turn into graceful shrub and floral borders under the magic of the summer sun. What was once just a tiny circle becomes a shade tree or tall evergreen. Lilies float in beauty on the mirror of a quiet pool. Odd brown bulbs send up little pointed hands through the moist earth to open a road for the regal beauty of spring and midsummer bloom -- crocus, hyacinth, tulip, iris, peony, lily, gladiolus, phlox, and dahlia. Here will be a wall of green. Pink roses will run along its crest; roses, too, will roof the arch above the garden gate. And so we dream on, golden dreams that seem to flow out of the gardener's very soul. It is a wonderfully romantic adventure this "Crusade of Beauty," and a plant for every purpose, one to satisfy every whim, can be found in the modern nursery.
As was said before, the small size of a plot of ground should constitute no hindrance in its adaptations to beauty and livability since beauty can be encompassed in a small area as in a large. There are formal and informal designs of endless variety to harmonize with different types of architecture. Open to the sun or blanketed by shade, level or uneven, fertile or barren, one's yard can support an outdoor living room. In many cases where absolutely no garden area is available, the roofs of dwellings are being made attractive and livable during summer months with green growing things to express the American ideal in gardening.