32 The Landscape Gardening Book 



or wood, with vines and low shrubs— but discerning eyes see that 

 something still is wrong, though their possessors may not know 

 what. A house rising from an irregular planting of trees and 

 shrubbery is far better, to be sure, than a house rising bare from 

 the ground on which it stands— yet this is not enough. 



There is but one reasonable and logical reconciliation between 

 Nature and the artificial. They cannot be brought into har- 

 monious relations except by carrying out architectural lines 

 beyond the hmits of stone or wood, in the more plastic materials 

 which Nature supplies, direct out of the garden— namely the 

 trees and shrubs. By this means, and this means only, there is 

 the gradual transition from Nature wild to Nature tamed, and 

 from Nature tamed and brought into a seemly order which 

 approaches graciously yet unmistakably towards geometrical 

 precision, to the actual and beautiful precision of the artificial 

 structure man has contrived, by the aid of his compass and 



square. 



And now it looks very much as if we had reached the position 

 of formal and informal, instead of a choice between the two — 

 which is exactly the answer to this troublesome question that a 

 study of the wonderful old gardens yields. So it develops that 

 we have just gone arovind in a circle and are no farther now than 

 when we started! 



Does it? No — for here is the pith of the argument; here is 

 what I have been talking all this time to get ready to say. The 

 formaHty of America is individual and distinctly American, 

 It is not to be expressed in alien modes, whether of building, 

 gardening, salutation, or what not. Upon occasion we are quite 

 as pvinctilious as may be, but we are punctilious in our way, 

 and not according to a foreign fashion. 



Therefore we are botmd to produce very different results. 



