This 19th century design of a garden seat made an elegant addition to formal flower gardens, as its parts were composed for the purpose of training foliage in a light and playful manner. The construction was very simple, consisting of oak pillars and iron-rods to form the arcades and trellises. The basket-like ornaments on the pillars were formed either of light iron or wicker-work into which creepers could be trained, so as to fill them with a rich assemblage of natural and living flowers.
An arcade of this kind, being of considerable length, would have a fine appearance in a straight line bordering a parterre. Parterres were formal gardens consisting of planting beds bordered with hedging and gravel bed walkways. As a garden seat, the design featured a light trellis roof, sloping from the straight connecting rods above the arches, down to the wall or back of the recess; this roof would be covered by foliages, thus affording protection from the sun.
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