12 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



of grouping flowers and variety of true form come back to us in the 

 flower garden. 



After the central error above shown there comes a common one 



of these writers, of supposing that those who seek natural form and 



beauty in the garden and home landscape are 



The Wild Garden opposed to the necessary level and even formal 



does not take spaces about a house. I wrote the " Wild 



the place of the Garden " to save, not to destroy, the flower garden ; 



Flower Garden. to show that we could have al j the j oy O f spr i n g 



in orchard, meadow, or wood, lawn or grove, and 

 so save the true flower garden near the house from being torn up twice 

 a year to effect what is called spring and summer " bedding." The 

 idea could be made clear to a child, and it is carried out in many 

 places easy to see. Yet there is hardly a cobbler who rushes from 

 his last to write a book on garden design who does not think that I 

 want to bring the wilderness in at the windows, I who have given all 

 my days to save the flower garden from the ridiculous. A young lady 

 who has been reading one of these bad books, seeing the square beds 

 in my little south garden, says : " Oh ! why, you have a formal garden ! " 

 It is a small square embraced by walls, and I could not have used 

 any other form to get the best use of the space. They are just the 

 kind of beds made in like spaces by the gardeners of Nebuchadnezzar, 

 judging by what evidence remains to us. And he no more than I 

 mistook stones for bushes or bad carpets for flowers, but enjoyed vine 

 and fig and flower as Heaven sent them. 



The real flower garden near the house is for the ceaseless care and 

 culture of many and diverse things often tender and in need of pro- 

 tection in varied soils, staking, cleaning, trials of novelties, study of 

 colour effects, sowings and plantings at all seasons. The wild 

 garden, on the other hand, is for things that take care of themselves 

 in the soil of the place, things which will endure for generations if 

 we suit the plants to the soil, like Narcissus on a rich orchard 

 bottom, or blue Anemone in a grove on the limestone soil as 

 in much of Ireland. This garden is a precious aid to the other, 

 inasmuch as it allows of our letting the flower garden do its best 

 work because relieved of the intolerable need of the bedding system 

 in digging up the garden twice a year. 



Very often now terms of gardening are misapplied, confusing the 



mind of the student, and the air is full of a new term, the "formal" 



garden. For ages gardens of simple form have been 



Misuse of terms, common without any one calling them " formal " 



until our own time of too many words confusing 



thoughts. Seeing an announcement that there was a paper in the 



Studio on the " Formal Garden in Scotland," I looked in it, seeking 



