3o6 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



thousand grassy lawns among the mountain Pines of Switzerland, 

 where beautiful things are seen in landscape, as there are on the 

 mountains of California and Cashmere, and, indeed, the many 

 other woody mountain lands of the world. 



Apart from the disposition of ground and its form, there is the 

 question of the arrangement of all the beautiful things of earth — 

 flower, shrub, or tree in right or wrong ways. Here there were 

 always lessons to be learned : lovely colonies of Bird's-eye Prim- 

 rose in the bogs of Westmoreland ; little families of Gentian by 

 the alpine streams ; groups of Venetian Sumach cropping out of 

 the hot southern rocks ; groups of May on the hill, the stately 

 groves of the lowland forest, and the Grey Willows of the marsh 

 land. In planting in the same way we are simply learning a 

 lesson direct from Nature, and not carrying out a mere fashion. 

 Even the creatures of earth and air are held together beautifully 

 — wild birds in the air, delicate brown flocks of them by the cold 

 northern sea, as well as groups of nobler birds on the banks of 

 the Nile and southern rivers ; the cattle on a thousand hills : in 

 no other way could their forms or colours be so well seen. And 

 so it must ever be in the garden where natural grouping is the 

 true and artistic way. 



The gardener should follow the true artist, however modestly, 

 in his love for things as they are, in delight in natural form and 

 beauty of flower and tree, if we are to be free from barren 

 geometry, and if our gardens are ever to be pictures. The 

 gardener has not the strenuous work of eye and hand that the 

 artist has, but he has plenty of good work to do : — to choose from 

 ten thousand beautiful living things ; to study their nature and 

 adapt them to his soil and climate ; to get the full expression of 

 their beauty ; to grow and place them well and in right relation 

 to other things, which is a life-study in itself, in view of the great 

 numbers of the flowers and flowering trees of the world. And as 

 the artist's work is to see and keep for us some of the beauty of 

 landscape, tree, or flower, so the gardener's should be to keep for 

 us as far as may be, in the fulness of their natural beauty, the 

 living things themselves. The artist gives us the fair image : the 



