258 Xan^scape Hrcbitecture 



the call of the flowers in their homes in the nooks of the 

 bushes and groves of lawns and forests, where 



Thick on the woodland floor 

 Gay company shall be 

 Primrose and hyacinth 

 And frail anemone, 

 Perennial strawberry bloom, 

 Wood sorrel's pencilled veil. 

 Dishevelled willow weed, 

 And orchids, purple and pale.^ 



Richard Jefferies, although not a landscape gardener, 

 observed and appreciated and interpreted nature in a 

 wonderful way. Here is his criticism of gardening and 

 free landscape : 



"Happily this park escaped and it is beautiful. 

 Our English landscape wants no gardening, it cannot 

 be gardened. The least interference kills it. The 

 beauty of English woodland and country is its detail. 

 There is nothing empty and unclothed. If the clods 

 are left a little while undisturbed in the field, weeds 

 spring and wild flowers bloom upon them. Is the 

 hedge cut and trimmed, lo, the blue flower, the more 

 and a yet fresher green buds forth on the twigs. 

 Never was there a garden like the meadow; there 

 is not an inch of the meadow in early summer without 

 a flower. Old walls as we saw just now are not left 

 without a fringe; on the top of the hardest brick wall, 

 on the sapless tiles, on slates stonecrop takes hold 

 and becomes a cushion of yellow bloom. Nature is 



' Robert Bridges, The Idle Flowers, 1913, p. 352. 



