174 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman 

 efforts of modern times can quite extinguish. 



These men — Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their 

 school — let us follow for style, elevated form, noble 

 ideals, and artistic interpretation of Nature. 



For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, 

 indigenous or exotic — to know how to plant and what 

 to plant — to know what to avoid in the practice of 

 modern blunderers — to know the true theory and 

 practice of Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, 

 after ample analysis — turn we to those books of 

 solid value of the three great luminaries of modern 

 garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon. 



And it were not only to be ungenerous, but 

 absolutely foolish, to neglect the study of the best 

 that is now written and done in the way of landscape- 

 gardening, in methods of planting, and illustration of 

 botany up to date. One school may see things from 

 a different point of view to another, yet is there but 

 one art of gardening. It is certain that to gain bold- 

 ness in practice, to have clear views upon that 

 delicate point — the relations of Art and Nature — 

 to have a reliable standard of excellence, we must 

 know and value the good in the garden -craft of all 

 times, we must sympathise with the point of view of 

 each phase, and follow that which is good in each 

 and all without scruple and doubtfulness. That 

 man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the 

 influence of his day, or that he can dispense with 

 tradition. 



I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for 



