38 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Delhi, where less inspiration could be got from the sites, the designs 

 were more nearly alike. In general the garden was inclosed in a 

 rectangular form by high walls, its corners strengthened by towers. 

 In the middle of each wall was often a great entrance gate. The 

 principal building, commonly the pleasure house, stood in the midst 

 of the garden, often surrounded by a canal and with four long water 

 basins extending in a cross from the central pavilion and terminating 

 against four features in the surrounding walls, — entrances or pavilions. 

 The four rectangular plots thus formed between the water courses and 

 the walls were further divided formally, and were sometimes planted in 

 bold masses to brilliant flowers, sometimes set out with trees of different 

 sorts. Though the design was simple and rigidly formal, much pains 

 was apparently taken in the original planting of the gardens to avoid 

 monotony, the different subdivisions often being given a different 

 character by being devoted to the culture of some particular fruit tree 

 or shade tree or flower. Often the principal flower display was confined 

 to long beds running parallel with the paths which bordered the long 

 water-basins, while the tree planting formed avenues paralleling the 

 surrounding walls, or in the larger schemes formed considerable groves 

 in which the tents of some of the followers of the monarch might be 

 pitched when he visited the garden on a royal progress. Not much use 

 could be made in these flat gardens of any form of cascade, nor apparently 

 was much attention devoted to large fountains. Rather, as in the 

 Moorish gardens in Spain, there were a multitude of small jets playing 

 in the midst of the canals or pools or perhaps arching over from the 

 stone coping into the pool. To give an effect of greater depth to the 

 basins, which were usually shallow, they were often paved with blue tiles 

 and further were diversified with the many-colored tiles which formed 

 an important part of the decoration of the garden buildings. The 

 copings of the pools, often beautifully carved, were so cut that the 

 water could be held brimming to their upper surface, still below the 

 level of the raised paths, thus giving both the greatest beauty of 

 reflection and the practical advantage of greater ease of the use of the 

 water throughout the gardens for irrigation. In this these gardens 

 differed from those of Italy, — that though in both countries the 

 use of the water from the point of view of beauty and enjoyment was 



