CHAPTER VII. 



TIIK TECHNICS OF GARDENING {contiflUcd.) 



" I cannot think Nature is so fpent and decayed that she can bring 

 forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like 

 herself ; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are 

 decayed, and studies ; she is not." — Ben Jonson. 



The old-fashioned country house has, almost in- 

 variably, a garden that curtseys to the house, with 

 its formal lines, its terraces, and beds of geometrical 

 patterns. 



But to the ordinary Landscape-gardener the 

 terrace is as much anathema as the " Kist o' 

 Whistles " to the Scotch Puritan ! So able and dis- 

 tinguished a eardener as Mr Robinson, while not 

 absolutely forbidding any architectural accessories or 

 geometrical arrangement, is for ever girding at them. 

 The worst thing that can be done with a true garden, 

 he says {" The English Flower Garden," p. ii), " is to 

 introduce any feature which, unlike the materials of 

 our world-designer, never changes. There are posi- 

 tions, it is true, where the intrusion of architecture 

 and embankment into the garden is justifiable ; nay, 

 now and then, even necessary." 



If one is to promulgate opinions that shall run 

 counter to the wisdom of the whole civilised world, 

 it is, of course, well that they should be pronounced 



