"Rustic arches should be in keeping with the house and grounds. Firstly they should be in keeping with the style of the house and grounds. A white stone house with a light pillared verandah is not suited by rustic arches: it requires to be seen through vistas made up of arches as slender as the verandah pillars, of painted iron-work preferably, and the most telling contrast will be arranged if there are numerous deep evergreen shrubs.

"Rustic, or peeled oak, arches suit the modern red brick villa style of house to perfection; the trellis arch, being neat and unpretentious, is also in excellent taste. The old-fashioned country cottage, or the house built to imitate it, should not have trellis-work within half a mile. Rustic arches, or invisible ones of bent iron, are alone in keeping. By an invisible arch, I mean one consisting of a single bend of iron, or narrow woodwork upright with a cross bar—anything really that is intended only to support some evergreen climber or close grower, such as a rose that will hide the foundation at all seasons.

"Arches simply built of rustic poles are more pleasing than wire or lattice ones in any landscape; and the roughness of the wood is beneficial to the climbers that grow over them, affording an easy hold for tendrils. Whether the wood is peeled, or employed with the bark on—the latter is the more artistic method—it is an admirable plan to wash it all over with a strong solution of some insecticide and then give one or two coats of varnish. In most cases varnish alone is enough to preserve the wood.

"The use of rustic wood in a garden is always safe since its appearance cannot conflict with Nature as painted woodwork when present in excess is sure to do. From woodcutter's yards, especially those in the heart of the country, charming pieces of log of any size can be bought very cheaply and whenever a tree on an estate has to be felled portions of its trunks or branches can be turned to good account in the garden."[91]