242 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



as the wilful and brutal distortion of the beautiful forms of trees. 

 The cost of this mutilation alone is one reason against it, as we 

 see where miles of trees cut into walls have to be clipped, as at 

 Versailles and Schonbrunn. This shearing is a mere " survival " 

 of the day when we had very few trees, and they were clipped to 

 fit the crude notion of " garden design " of the day. The fact 

 that men when they had few trees made them into walls to make 

 them serve their ways of " design " is no reason why we, rich in 

 the trees of all the hills of the north, should go on mutilating 

 them. 



While it may be right to clip a tree to form a dividing-line or 



hedge, it is never so to clip trees grown for their own sakes, as by 



shaving such we only get ugly, unnatural forms. 



Unnatural forms. Men who trim with shears or knife so fine a tree 



as the Holly are dead to beauty of form and 



cannot surely have seen how fine in form old Holly trees are. To 



give us such ugly forms in gardens is to show one's self callous to 



beauty of tree form, and to prove that one cannot even see ugliness. 



The Cherry Laurel in its natural shape in the woods is often fine 



in form ; but it is planted everywhere in gardens without thought of 



its fitness for each place, and as it grows apace, the shears are called 



in, and its shoots are cut into ugly banks and formless masses. 



There is no place in which it is clipped for which we could not get 



shrubs of the desired size that would not need the shears. 



In the old gardens, when people had very few evergreens, or 

 where they wanted an object of a certain height, they had to clip. 

 It is well to preserve such gardens, but never to imitate them. If we 

 want shelter, we can get it in various pleasant ways without clipping, 

 and, while getting it, we can enjoy the natural forms of the ever- 

 greens. Hedges and wall-like lines of green living things are useful, 

 and even may be artistically used. Occasionally we find clipped 

 arches and bowers pretty, and these, when very old, are worth keep- 

 ing. Besides, there is much difference between evergreen archways 

 or bowers, hedges, and shelters, and the fantastic clipping of living 

 trees into the shapes of bird or beast or coffee-pot. 



Now and then we see attempts on the part of those with more 

 knowledge of some half-mechanical grade of decorative " design " 

 than of beautiful form to galvanise the corpse of the topiary art. 

 Such an idea would not occur to any one knowing the many beautiful 

 things now within our reach, nor to any landscape-painter who studies 

 beautiful forms of earth or trees or flowers, nor to any lover of Nature in 

 tree or flower. Sometimes these puerilities are set into book form. 

 For one author there is no art in gardening, but cutting a tree into 

 the shape of a cocked hat is " art," and he says : 



