CHAPTER III. 



DESIGN AND POSITION AGAINST STYLES, USELESS STONEWORK, 

 AND STEREOTYPED PLANS TIME'S EFFECT ON GARDEN DE- 

 SIGN ARCHITECTURE AND FLOWER GARDENS DESIGN NOT 

 FORMAL ONLY USE IN THE GARDEN OF BUILDERS' AND 

 OTHER DEGRADED FORMS OF THE PLASTIC ART. 



THE first thing is to get a clear idea of the hollowness of much 

 of the talk about " styles." In books about laying out gardens there 

 are many dissertations on styles, the authors going even to China 

 and to Mexico for illustrations. What is the result to anybody who 

 looks from words to things ? That there are two styles : the one 

 strait-laced, mechanical, with much wall and stone, with fountains 

 and sculpture ; the other the natural, which, once free of the house, 

 accepts the ground lines of the earth herself as the best, and gets 

 plant beauty from the flowers and trees arranged in picturesque 

 ways. 



There are positions where stonework is necessary ; but the beauti- 

 ful terrace gardens are those that are built where the nature of the 

 ground required them. There is nothing more melancholy than the 

 walls, fountain basins, clipped trees, and long canals of places like the 

 Crystal Palace, not only because they fail to satisfy trie desire for 

 beauty, but because they tell of wasted effort, and riches worse than 

 lost. There are, from Versailles to Caserta, a great many ugly 

 gardens in Europe, but at Sydenham we have the greatest modern 

 example of the waste of enormous means in making hideous a 

 fine piece of ground. As Versailles has numerous tall fountains, the 

 best way of glorifying ourselves was to make some taller ones at 

 Sydenham ! Instead of confining the terrace gardening to the upper 

 terrace, by far the greater portion of the ground was devoted to a 

 stony extravagance of design, and nearly in the centre were placed 

 the vast and ugly fountain basins. The contrivances to enable the 

 water to go downstairs, the temples, statues and dead walls, were 

 praised by the papers as the marvellous work of a genius. 



Many whose lawns were, or might readily have been made, the 

 most beautiful of gardens, have spoiled them for sham terraced 



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