I have rarely seen a commercial concrete garden-seat
which was not more ornate than I should want it for my own acre. I
happen to have two or three articles in my garden which are a trifle
elaborate but they are of terra-cotta, are not home-made and would be
plainer could I have found them so.
A garden needs furniture only less than a house, and concrete is a boon
to "natural" gardening, being inexpensive, rustic, and imperishable. I
fancy a chief reason why there is such inconsiderate dearth of seats and
steps in our American amateur gardens is the old fashion--so well got
rid of at any cost--of rustic cedar and hickory stairs and benches.
"Have none of them," was Colonel Waring's injunction; "they are forever
out of repair."
But I fear another reason is that so often our gardens are neither for
private ease nor social joy, but for public display and are planned
mainly for street exhibition. That is the way we commonly treat garden
fountains! We make a smug show of unfenced, unhedged, universal
hospitality across a sidewalk boundary which nevertheless we hold
inviolate--sometimes by means of a painted sign or gas-pipe--and never
say "Have a seat" to the dearest friend in any secluded nook of our
shrubberies, if there is such a nook. How many of us know a fountain
beside an embowered seat where one,--or two,--with or without the book
of verses, can sit and hear it whisper or watch the moonlight cover it
with silent kisses? In my limited experience I have known of but two.
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