i8o GARDEN-CRAFT. 



Mere neutral teaching can father nothing ; it can 

 never breed a system of stable device that is capable 

 of development. But old garden-craft is positive, 

 where the other is negative ; it has no niggling 

 scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment 

 except the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its 

 permanent value as a standard of device — for every 

 gardener must needs desire the support of some 

 backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts 

 — he must needs have some basis of form on which 

 to rest his own device, his own realisations of natural 

 beauty — and what safer, stabler system of garden- 

 craft can he wish for than that of the old English 

 garden — itself the outcome of a spacious age, well 

 skilled in the pictorial art and bent upon perfection ? 



The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are 

 beauty, animation, variety, mystery. A garden's 

 beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured by its 

 capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, 

 and we need not fear to use embellishment or strong 

 colour, or striking device, according to the adage 

 " The richly provided richly require." 



Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the 

 grace of a garden, because all gardening is Art or 

 nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art in a garden, 

 nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its 

 charm. I have no more scruple in using the scissors 

 upon tree or shrub, where trimness is desirable, than 

 1 have in mowing the turf of the lawn that once 

 represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm 

 in the results of the topiary art, in the prim imagery 



