ART IN RELATION TO FLOWER-GARDENING AND GARDEN DESIGN, g 



drawing of a garden with the elements of varied beauty in it. In 

 the work of Alfred Parsons and a few others we see the beginning of 

 things of beauty in the painting of gardens, but it is for us gardeners 

 to commence by first being artists ourselves, and opening our eyes to 

 see the ugly things about us. 



Artists of real power would paint gardens and home landscapes if 

 there were real pictures to draw ; but generally they are so rare that 

 the work does not come into the artist's view at all. Through all 

 the rage of the " bedding-out " fever, it was impossible for an artist 

 to paint in a garden like those which disfigured the land from Blair 

 Athol to Kew. It is difficult to imagine Corot sitting down to paint 

 the Grande Trianon, or the terrace patterns at Versailles, though a 

 poor hamlet in the North of France, with a few willows near, 

 gave him a lovely picture. Once, when trying to persuade Mr Mark 

 Fisher, the landscape painter, to come into a district remarkable 

 for its natural beauty, he replied : " There are too many gentlemen's 

 places there to suit my work," a reference to the hardness and 

 ugliness of the effects around most country seats, owing to the 

 iron-bound pudding-clumps of trees, railings, capricious clippings and 

 shearings, bad colours, and absence of fine and true form. 



