162 ORNAMENTAL GARDENING. 



MAJOR AND MINOR FEATURES OP EMBELLISHMENT. 



It is important to observe that the nearer the mate- 

 rials used for making ornamental gardens are to their 

 natural condition, the more freely may they he used, if 

 generally appropriate without offending good taste and 

 vice versa. A town lot, for example, might be un- 

 adorned, except with grass and not look distasteful, but 

 if we plant every foot solid with the brightest art-im- 

 proved flowers, the effect would then be shocking. Use a 

 large proportion of grass — because it is a material near 

 the natural condition, and a few improved flowers — be- 

 cause they are more or less distantly removed from their 

 primitive forms by culture, and both are better for 

 these proportions. In the same class with grass are 

 trees, shrubs, wild flowers, rocks, and water, and these, 

 when not in a general way inappropriate, and are ar- 

 ranged naturally, may be used almost without limit as 

 major features of adornment in landscape gardening. 

 But arrange trees and shrubs formally, or clip them into 

 unnatural shapes, or make ^^geometrical" beds of im- 

 proved flowers, or artifical terraces, walks and drives, or 

 bring statuary, fountains, and the like into gardens, and 

 it must, as a rule, be on a moderate scale or bad effects 

 result. Such productions in gardening, like jewels in 

 dress, must be. used with discretion, having an appropri- 

 ate setting, or their power to gratify is weakened. 



The famous gardens of Versailles, France, are only 

 great in the respect that millions of francs have been 

 spent in the stupid attempt to enlarge what should serve 

 as minor embellishments into leading features, crowding 

 the place with semi-natural and artificially clipped trees, 

 formal beds, fountains, water-works, avenues, terraces, 

 etc., until nothing is left to embellish. 



But a garden may be so essentially artificial, owing to 

 smallness or the proximity of large buildings, etc., that 



