GARDEN DESIGN AND RECENT WRITINGS UPON IT. 



but he is as happy in a lawn garden, in a rich valley soil, or on the 

 banks of a river, or on those gentle hill-slopes that ask for no terraces, 

 or in the hundreds of gardens in and near towns and cities of Europe 

 that are enclosed by walls and where there is no room for landscape 

 effect (many of them distinctly beautiful too, as in Mr. Fox's garden 

 at Falmouth) ; as much at home in a border-castle garden as in the 

 lovely Penjerrick, like a glimpse of a valley in some Pacific isle, or 

 Mount Usher, cooled by mountain streams. 



The same architect turns on the waterworks as his chief solace : 



But of all the fascinating sources of effect in garden-making the most 

 fascinating are waterworks. An expensive luxury as a rule, but they well repay 

 the expense. 



Well, there is some evidence of the sort of design these afford ; 



some instances terrible in their ugliness (one hideous at Bayreuth). 



And with all the care that a rich State may take 



Waterworks of them, can we say that the effect at Versailles is 



garden design, artistic or delightful ? Water tumbling into the 



blazing streets of Roman cities and nobly designed 



fountains supplying the people with water was right ; but in our cool 



land artificial fountains are very different in effect, and often hideous 



extravagance. Of their ugliness there is evidence in nearly every city 



in Europe, including our own Trafalgar Square, and that fine work at 



the head of the Serpentine. We have also our Crystal Palace and 



Chatsworth, designed as they might be by a theatrical super who had 



suddenly inherited a millionaire's fortune. What the effect of this is 



I need hardly say, but with all our British toleration of ugliness I have 



never heard anybody enthusiastic about their artistic merits. So far 



as our island countries go, nothing asks for more care and modest art 



than the introduction into the garden or home-landscape of artificial 



water. Happily our countries are rich in the charms of natural water 



— too often neglected in its planting. 



Among the great peoples of old, so far as known to our human 



story, was one supreme in art, from buildings chiselled as delicately 



as the petals of the wild rose, to the smallest 



Hollow talk of coins in their pockets, and bits of baked clay in 



the day about their graves, and this is clear to all men from 



art. what emains of their work gathered from the 



mud and dust of ages. And from that time of 



deathless beauty in art comes the voice of one who saw this lovely 



art in its fulness : The greatest and fairest things are done by 



Nature and the lesser by Art (Plato). There is not a garden in 



Britain, free from convention and carpet-gardening, from the 



cottage-gardens nestling beneath the Surrey hills to those fair and 



C 2 



