24 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



garden in the Thames valley. But the lawn is the heart of the true 

 English garden, and as essential to it as the terrace to the gardens on the 

 steep hills. 



We may get every charm of a garden and every use of a country 

 place without sacrificing the picturesque or the beautiful. There is no 

 reason, either in the working or design of gardens, why there should 

 be a false line in them ; every charm of the flower garden may be 

 secured by avoiding the knots and scrolls which subordinate all the 

 plants and flowers of a garden, all its joy and life, to a conventional 

 design. The true way is the opposite. With only the simplest plans 

 to ensure good working, we should see the flowers and feel the 

 beauty of plant forms, and secure every scrap of turf wanted for 

 play or lawn, and for every enjoyment of a garden. 



Time's effect on gardens is one of the main considerations. 



Fortress-town and castle moat are now without further use, \vhere 



in old days gardens were set within the walls. 



Time and gardens. To keep all that remains of such gardens should 



be our first care never to imitate them now. 



Many are far more beautiful than the modern gardens, which have 



been kept bare of plants or flower life. At one time it was rash to 



make a garden away from protecting walls ; but when the danger 



from civil war was past, then arose the often beautiful Elizabethan 



house, free from all moat or trace of war. 



In those days the extension of the decorative work of the house 

 into the garden had some novelty to carry it off, while the kinds of 

 evergreens were very much fewer than now. Hence if the old 

 gardeners wanted an evergreen hedge or bush of a certain height, 

 they clipped a Yew tree to the form and size they wanted. Notwith- 

 standing this, we have no evidence that anything like the flat 

 monotony often seen in our own time existed then. To-day the 

 ever-growing city, pushing its hard face over our once beautiful land, 

 should make us wish more and more to keep such beauty of the earth 

 as may be still possible to us. 



