1856.] Landscape Gardening. 27 



A COMMON SENSE VIEW OP LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



AS AN ART. 



Ornamental Gardening, it is fair to suppose, had its origin in that 

 desire common to all mankind above the nomadic tribes, to possess a home, 

 which should diflFer in some degree from, and be superior to, the common 

 waste. The useful — the field or garden patch — is the first step in civili- 

 zation. But no sooner are the necessities provided for than that aesthetic 

 sentiment which exists, although perhaps in a dormant state, in every 

 breast, however rough or savage, makes itself felt, and demands that 

 something shall be done for its gratification. Simj^le and uncouth indeed 

 we may suppose the first attempt at ornamentation of grounds to have 

 been. In his strolls through the surrounding woods, the improver's eye 

 is struck with the gay color of some flower, or the beautiful foliage of 

 some umbrageous shrub. He stops to admire it, and with his admira- 

 tion springs up a feeling — the very first one succeeding admiration in 

 the human breast — the desire to possess the object. The flower is trans- 

 planted to the vicinity of his hut, where, under his careful tending, it 

 thrives and. re-pays him by its graceful bloom and grateful fragrance. 

 But the very efi'ort of taking care of his first floral pet, has developed 

 and strengthened the feeling of admiration for some similar beautiful 

 objects in nature, and it is not long ere he is induced to transplant 

 another prize to his own home. Ere long he has a little collection of 

 such. Not harmoniously arranged, nor even judiciously chosen — yet, 

 rough though it be, it is a garden. And farther, it is a garden which, so 

 far as it has a plan or princii3le at all, is formed upon what will be shown, 

 a little further on, to be the only true and correct principle in the art. 



From the time when mankind arrived at such a forwardness in civiliza- 

 tion that ornamental gardening became a necessary art, and was reduced 

 to certain rules, up to the present time, two great systems may be said 

 to have reigned in Gardening. 



The first of these, that which was adopted when first the nations 

 emerged from barbarism, when the other arts of civilization were 

 developed, had also the longest reign, and ruled for many centuries, to 

 the entire exclusion of the ideas which now prevail. The chief idea in 

 this first system appears to have been to make all Gardens as distinct as 

 possible from similar pieces of ground in a state of nature. Mankind 



