GARDENS AND GARDEN DESIGNERS 5 



spent where necessary. The modern formal garden is 

 of quite another stamp, with its flimsily-constructed 

 terraces, its ill-designed vases and statuary. There is a 

 certain straining after effect noticeable, and a lack of 

 dignity displayed, which makes this latter a very feeble 

 imitation of its prototype. How can a modern villa be 

 expected to act as a suitable foil to a style of garden 

 design which is a cheap adaptation of that practised at 

 Versailles or Chatsworth ? 



But, leaving the formal garden for a moment, and 

 passing to a consideration of that which was the outcome 

 of an entirely different set of ideas. The landscape 

 school of designers believed that severity and stiffness 

 were totally out of place in a garden, and the only way 

 to secure artistic and beautiful effects was to go direct 

 to Nature for a model. This was right in so far as it 

 went ; it became ridiculous when carried to extremes. 

 If "Capability Brown," himself the most noted member 

 of the new school, and his followers had been content 

 to study Nature, gathering thus many valuable lessons, 

 and then being content to adapt them to the altered 

 conditions which the nature of a garden imposed, much 

 good might have resulted. But instead, their great 

 ambition was to stifle any ideas they might have on the 

 subject, and become slavish imitators, trying to reproduce 

 a whole landscape within the small limits of the garden 

 boundaries. Brown was hailed as a genius, and his 

 advice requisitioned in the remodelling of many of 

 England's best gardens. All traces of formality were 

 swept away, the terraces, stately parterres, yew hedges, 

 and regular-shaped beds were abolished, and the ground 

 laid out on entirely new lines. This consisted in the 

 introduction of miniature mountains, streams and torrents, 

 the latter crossed by bridges ; the remaking of paths, so 

 that they wound in serpentine curves, entailing needless 

 labour to traverse. At Blenheim, Brown turned a river 



