Garden Structures: Rustic, Victorian & Gothic

¶ Summer houses or covered seats are very pleasant features, whether contemplated as a portion of scenery or as places of resort in fine weather. The pavilion and temple form are frequently adopted for these, where the classic style of architecture prevails. In many cases, however, rustic seats should be chosen in preference to the architectural kind. Of the rustic kind, we give three examples.

¶ Fig. 179 evinces some degree of the Gothic taste in its cusping and pinnacles; it should always be so situated as to be seen in connection with the house, thereby exhibiting its subordina tion to the principal object in the landscape.

Gothic Garden Structure.

¶ Fig. 180 should also be seen in connection with the house; its aspect, though somewhat rustic, has nevertheless too much polish in it to admit of an entire separation from the nucleus of improvement, which the house in all landscape gardening is justly assumed to be.

Rustic Garden Seat.

¶ Fig. 181 is a high type of the rustic covered seat. It is, however, easily and cheaply made, being built by setting cedar posts in the ground, forming a framework for the roof by bending flexible limbs to the required curves, and covering it with shingles or thatch. The other portions of the rustication are completed by selecting limbs of irregular form and securing them in place with nails; the limbs in every case retaining their bark and natural roughness.

Garden Seat.

¶ In this kind of work, although it must be admitted that considerable skill is requisite to give it a tasteful appearance, it should be borne in mind that the least display of the use of tools accords best with the character of the work. Inasmuch as this sort of structure evinces as much of nature as it does of art, and harmonizes well with sylvan scenery, it may be placed in any spot at a distance from the house, secluded or exposed; but if exposed so as to be embraced in a connected view with the house, it ought to be in such a manner as to exhibit, by the agency of walks, its intimate relation to the house, notwithstanding the intervention of a considerable distance.

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