THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



and we cannot have the foregrounds of beautiful English scenery- 

 daubed with flower gardens like coloured advertisements. Many 

 see the right way from their own sense being true, but others may 

 wish for proof of what is urged here as to the true source of lasting 

 work in art in the work of the great artists of all time. And we may 

 be as true artists in the garden and home landscape as anywhere else, 



There is no good picture which does not image for us the beauty 

 of natural things, and why not begin with these and be artists in 

 their growth and grouping ? for one reason among others that we 

 are privileged to have the living things about us, and not merely 

 representations of them. 



So far we have spoken of the work of the true artist, which is 



always marked by respect for Nature and by keen study of her^ 



But apart from this we have a great many men 



The true artist, who do what is called " decorative " work, useful, 



but still not art in the sense of delight in, and 



study of, things as they are the whole class of decorators, who- 



make our carpets, tiles, curtains, and who adapt conventional or 



geometric forms mostly to flat surfaces. Skill in this way may be 



considerable without any attention whatever being paid to the 



greater art that is concerned with life in all its fulness. 



This it is well to see clearly; as for the flower gardener it matters 

 much on which side he stands. Unhappily, our gardeners for ages 

 have suffered at the hands of the decorative artist, when applying his 

 ''designs" to the garden, and designs which may be quite right on a 

 surface like a carpet or panel have been applied a thousand times to 

 the surface of the reluctant earth. It is this adapting of absurd 

 " knots " and patterns from old books to any surface where a flower 

 garden has to be made that leads to bad and frivolous design- 

 wrong in plan and hopeless for the life of plants. It is so easy for 

 any one asked for a plan to furnish one of this sort without the 

 slightest knowledge of the life of a garden. 



For ages the flower garden has been marred by absurd- 

 ities of this kind of work as regards plan, though the flowers 

 were in simple and natural ways. But in our 

 Carpet bedding, own time the same " decorative " idea has come 

 to be carried out in the planting of the flowers 

 under the name of " bedding out," " carpet bedding," or " mosaic 

 culture." In this the beautiful forms of flowers are degraded 

 to crude colour without reference to the natural forms or beauty 

 of the plants, clipping being freely done to get the carpets level. 

 When these tracery gardens were made, often by people without 

 any knowledge of the plants of a garden, they were found to 

 be difficult to plant ; hence attempts to do without the gardener 



