4 GARDENS IN THE MAKING 



and gardening especially lends itself to the acquire- 

 ment of multitudinous facts about individual 

 flowers. This does not engender humility, and, as 

 often as not, it breeds a prejudice against any serious 

 arrangement, and chiefly against the formality of 

 architectural planning. Yet this prejudice, like so 

 many others, is more wilful than wise ; it is the 

 fruit of a gentle anarchic state of mind which fails 

 to grasp the meaning of order and of design, and 

 which fancies that it allies itself with Nature — that 

 Nature which, nevertheless, responds so lovingly to 

 the wise tuition of mankind. To those who still 

 refuse to allow the architect a place in their garden 

 councils, and who cling persistently either to the 

 Victorian taste or to the purer joys of the wild 

 garden and the " wilderness," we will submit only 

 one plea. We beg them, as they have time and 

 opportunity, to see the efl^ect of rational planning in 

 those fine old gardens, chiefly of the seventeenth 

 century, that have reached such glorious maturity 

 on the lines long ago laid down ; and as lovers of 

 architecture, and as lovers of flowers, we ask them 

 to study the harmony, the fitness, and withal the 

 rich luxuriance which these methods, properly carried 



