Gardens.—At Bournville the average garden-space allowed each house is 600 square yards, this being found to be about as much as the average man can well attend to. (This means there will be from eight to twelve cottages to the acre.) The laying out is done prior to the tenant’s occupation of the house. A description of the way the Bournville gardens are laid out is given, with a plan, on page 23.
When the houses are placed at the end of the plot remote from the road, any hard and fast lines in the style of the garden should be avoided: apple and other fruit-trees, or an occasional kitchen-garden, may be placed in a prominent position, for even the trim flower-garden might be varied with advantage. A preference has already been expressed for having the garden adjacent to the house rather than the allotment garden at a distance, but at the same time the latter plan may be sometimes forced upon us. Undoubtedly the rivalry that is encouraged among gardeners congregated together in allotment gardens is good and healthy, but the inconvenience to the household of the distance between home and garden would suggest the adoption of the former whenever it is possible, and even where there is an allotment there should still be a small plot adjacent to the house.
While endeavouring to get as much light and air space as possible in the village, it will frequently be found necessary to erect cottages in blocks of four, and sometimes of eight. In order to give adequate garden-space, even to small houses, and not in long thin strips, the frontage of the land will have to be broad; a rule should be made, therefore, of spreading the houses laterally by arranging the staircase of each house, not between the back and front rooms, but between the houses. This will bring the outside houses nearer to the extremity of the land, and will not only give each garden the desired straightness and breadth, but afford a greater breadth of view upon it from within.
In conclusion, it might be again stated that most of the remarks under this head—which are mainly arranged from notes taken or suggested during the planning and working out of the Bournville Estate—are broad and suggestive rather than insistent, and it is probable that the setting out of particular land will not admit of the adoption of many of the principles here laid down.
BRADBURY, AGNEW & CO., LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
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[Pg 17]: ‘necessiting’ replaced by ‘necessitating’.