CHAPTER III 

 The Style of a Garden 



ALL the lovely gardens of the world are ours to draw sugges- 

 tions from. Let us do just that, and stop there, scorning 

 ever to copy. When all is said and done, let us have, here 

 in America, American gardens — not imitation Italian, or English, 

 or Dutch gardens, or any other sort. 



Italy, in the splendor of its gleaming, time-stained marbles 

 and solemn cypress trees, is Italy adorned as its life, its climate, 

 its social peculiarities and its evolution through twice a thousand 

 years have adorned it. England, with her castles and ancient 

 abbeys, and their moats and fish-ponds — relics of feudal days 

 and cloistered monasteries — her clipped yews and velvet turf, 

 is England after centuries of wars, of invasions, of murders and 

 pilferings, and all the shifting conditions of life which these 

 things bring. Is it not time we younger folks over here recognize 

 this, and give up the ridiculous task of attempting to build 

 Elizabethan and Italian gardens? Good taste and common 

 sense would both seem to indicate that it is. 



There are three factors which have directed the evolution of 

 these old-world gardens quite as definitely as they have directed 

 the evolution of the races which built them. And these three 

 factors are at work here among us now and they will always be 

 at work among men, and will always so direct. Climate is one, 



(29) 



