DESIGN AND POSITION. 



signer's view. But now that many beautiful trees and shrubs are 

 coming to us from many countries, the aim of true gardening is, so far 

 from mutilating them, to develop their natural forms. In by far the 

 greater number of beautiful places in England, from Knole to Haddon, 

 and from the fine west-country houses to the old border castles, there 

 are many of the fairest gardens where the trees are never touched 

 with shears. Sutton Place, near Guildford, built in 1 521, is one of the 

 most beautiful old houses in the home counties, and its architecture 

 is none the less delightful because the trees near show their true 

 forms. It is also an example of a fine old house around which 

 there is no terraced gardening. 



It would be as hopeless to design a building without knowing 

 anything of its uses or inhabitants as to design a garden without full 

 knowledge of its nobler ornaments — trees and the many things that 

 go to make our garden flora vary so much in form, habits, and hardi- 

 ness according to soils, situations, and districts. Errors of the most 

 serious kind arise from dealing with such things without knowledge, 

 and any attempt to keep the gardener out of the garden must fail, as 

 it did in our own day in the case of the broken brick and stone flower 

 beds at South Kensington. Except for what is mostly a very small 

 area near the house, the architect and garden-designer deal with 

 distinct subjects and wholly distinct materials. They should work 

 in harmony, but not seek to do that for which their training and 

 knowledge have not fitted them. 



Statues in Gardens. — By common consent the British statue 

 is nothing to be proud of, and the spread of the statue mania to 

 gardens — public or private — is to be deplored. The place for a good 

 statue is within the protection of some public or other building ; a 

 bad one is better out of sight altogether. A witty French writer, 

 M. Harduin, has lately been protesting against this statuomanie as 

 he calls it, and says, quite justly, that a statue that fixes the eye in a 

 garden is no good substitute for the effect of tree, or grass, or flower. 

 Further, that we have already too many statues in cities. Assuming, 

 however, that people are satisfied with statues as they are, it is surely 

 unnecessary to spot them over the parks and in gardens while 

 there is such an immense choice of sites for these or similar monu- 

 ments on embankments or in streets. 



In a northern country like ours a statue of any high merit as a work 

 of art deserves to be protected by a building of some kind. The effect 

 of frost and rain in our climate on statuary out-of-doors is very destruc- 

 tive, and the face of a statue of some merit put up only a few years 

 ago opposite the Royal Exchange is now rotted away. The scattering 

 of numerous statues of a low order of merit, or of no merit at all, 

 which we see in some Italian gardens, often gives a bad effect, and the 



