THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



Why say so much here about art ? Because when we see the 

 meaning of true " art " we cannot endure what is ugly and false in art, 

 and we cannot have the foregrounds of beautiful English scenery 

 daubed with flower gardens like coloured advertisements. Many 

 see the right way from their own sense being true, but others may 

 wish for proof of what is urged here as to the true source of lasting 

 work in art in the work of the great artists of all time. And we may 

 be as true artists in the garden and home landscape as anywhere else. 



There is no good picture which does not image for us the beauty 

 of natural things, and why not begin with these and be artists in 

 their growth and grouping ? — for one reason among others that we 

 are privileged to have the living things about us, and not merely 

 representations of them. 



So far we have spoken of the work of the true artist, which is 

 always marked by respect for Nature and by keen study of her. 

 But apart from this we have a great many men who do what is 

 called " decorative " work, useful, but still not art in the sense of 

 delight in, and study of, things as they are — the whole class of 

 decorators, who make our carpets, tiles, curtains, and who adapt 

 conventional or geometric forms mostly to flat surfaces. Skill in this 

 way may be considerable without any attention whatever being paid 

 to the greater art that is concerned with life in all its fulness. 



This it is well to see clearly ; as for the flower gardener it matters 

 much on which side he stands. Unhappily, our gardeners for ages 

 have suffered at the hands of the decorative artist, when applying his 

 " designs " to the garden, and designs which may be quite right on a 

 surface like a carpet or panel have been applied a thousand times to 

 the surface of the much enduring earth. It is this adapting of absurd 

 " knots " and patterns from old books to any surface where a flower 

 garden has to be made that leads to bad and frivolous design — 

 wrong in plan and hopeless for the life of plants. It is so easy for 

 any one asked for a plan to furnish one of this sort without the 

 slightest knowledge of the life of a garden. 



For ages the flower-garden has been marred by absurdities of 

 this kind of work as regards plan, though the flowers were in simple 

 and natural ways. But in our own time the same " decorative " idea 

 has come to be carried out in the planting of the flowers under the 

 name of " bedding out," " carpet bedding," or " mosaic culture," In 

 this the beautiful forms of flowers are degraded to the level of crude 

 colour to make a design, and without reference to the natural form or 

 beauty of the plants, clipping being freely done to get the carpets 

 or patterns " true." When these tracery gardens were made, often by 

 people without any knowledge of the plants of a garden, they were 

 found to be difficult to plant ; hence attempts to do without the 



