THE GAEDEN AND ITS DEVELOPMENT. 409 



of air, as thickets and trees would do. At the same time it shields the 

 inclosed ground from direct view and thus permits the concealment 

 behind it of the mechanical features of gardening. As the space so 

 inclosed could be used as a vegetable garden, it became customary not 

 to separate the useful garden from the ornamental, and in the larger 

 gardens the space behind the hedges was even leased out for useful 

 purpos<'s. 



Although the German taste will sadly miss in this garden green 

 leaves and sunnner flowers, this is the consequence of the rainless sum- 

 mer climate, not of the indifference of the Italians. In oi-d(M- to (j])tain 

 in the smaller beds a particolored appearance which could not ])e effected 

 with deciduous flowers, direct means were used by completely fllling 

 up the small box-bordered compartments with broken stones or glass 

 slag of deffnite colors.. In this way the effect of a modern tapestrj^ 

 garden was produced long' before the Northern gardeners invented a 

 similar arrangement with living plants. 



While decorative summer flowers and green grassplots were com- 

 pletely wanting in the Italian renaissance garden, it, however, possessed 

 instead a number of plants adapted by their form to clearly accentuate 

 the geometrical lines of this style of garden. Myrtle and laurel afford 

 the best imaginable material for the clipped hedges, to imitate which 

 th(» yew is generally employed in the North. Slender cypresses were 

 especially preferred to mark the corners of the regular plots, or the}' 

 were used to form independent straight alleys which had the effect of 

 colonnades. When here and there the low, flat, spreading crowns of 

 the h(^lm-oak were used to form overarching shad}- pathways, All)erti 

 protested against it as conti'ar}'^ to the style of the garden, but practical 

 use has, in the course of time, overcome all theoretical considerations. 

 What lent to all these components of an Italian garden a sp(H'ial \ alue 

 was the fact that the plants were all evergreen, and throughout both 

 summer and winter the geometrical outline of the garden was clearly 

 expressed. 



The garden of the Italian renaissance contained more than plants. It 

 was at the same time a museum in which were plac(>d for exhibition 

 the remains of antique sculpture which the increast'd interest in the 

 ancient world gradually recovered from the Italian soil. No example 

 of the early garden of the renaissance has been preserved unchanged 

 up to our times, but the garden of the Albani villa, at Rome, altiiough 

 established almost three hundred years later, gives us in its strictly 

 horticultural part, as well as in its use of sculpture and architecture, a 

 good idea of an early renaissance garden. 



Because of the predilection for placing the garden upon a hillside, 

 the problem was presented of building for it and its associated orna- 

 mental structures a series of stairways, often very complicattnl. whicii 

 united the various terraces of the garden. From such a coaflguratiou 



