THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



You may go into any American town where 

 there is any inequality of ground and in half 

 an hour find a hundred or two private lawns 

 graded — from the house to each boundary line 

 — on a single falling curve, or, in plain English, 

 a hump. The best reason why this curve is not 

 artistic, not pleasing, but stupid, is that it is not 

 natural and gains nothing by being unnatural. 

 All gardening is a certain conquest of Nature, 

 and even when "formal" should interfere with 

 her own manner and custom as slightly as is 

 required by the necessities of the case — the 

 needs of that particular spot's human use and 

 joy. The right profile and surface for a lawn of 

 falling grade, the surface which will permanently 

 best beguile both eye and foot, should follow a 

 double curve, an ogee line. For, more or less 

 emphasized, that is Nature's line in all her 

 affable moods on land or water: a descent or as- 

 cent beginning gradually, increasing rapidly, and 

 concluding gently. We see it in the face of any 

 smooth knoll or billow. I believe the artists 

 impute to Praxiteles a certain ownership in this 

 double curve. It is a living line; it suggests 



18 



