The word "pergola" usually includes various semi-architectural features that add variety and charm to a garden by making an attractive support for flowering vines and climbers, and by thus covering walks and pathways and making shady and airy tunnels. The pergola is made up of a series of columns or piers in a row, and is flat on top, with beams or poles interlaced overhead.

A pergola should lead to some object like a summer-house, a bench, or a fountain ; or it may connect one part of a garden with another, or act as a screen, much as would a hedge between a flower garden and the vegetable garden.

No matter what form it may take, whether it is flat on top like a pergola or domed like a series of arches, the position of the arbor in a garden must be carefully selected. You don't want it to look like a tangled mass of greenery piled up in the most prominent place in the garden that provides a damp, cozy home for bugs and other insects.

Flowering vines and climbers appear to the best advantage when trained on the posts and cross beams of an arbor, and the glimmering light and shade that plays along this covered way makes it a charming feature of garden magic.

To the garden lover who realizes that there is more to ornamental gardening than the mere raising of flowers and plants, the arbor or pergola may be a welcome accessory, whose semi-architectural appearance will go far toward making his garden a more interesting place to look at, in winter as well as summer. It is imperative, however, that such a fixture should fit its surroundings in plan and appearance, just as a house should fit its site.