TYPES OF GARDENS 



by mosses and lichens, by cunningly planted vegetation, and by end- 

 less little interferences with the designer's intentions, she would veil 

 the crude formality of his handiwork and enrich the bareness of his 

 plan. His architecture would become simply the ground on which 

 she would embroider her patterns and her designs. 

 Indeed, he would be a foolish person who presumed to do without 

 nature in decorating an open space undefended by stout walls and not 

 covered by a roof. From the very beginning he would be at war 

 with a power against which he would be helpless. Fight as he 

 might, nature would conquer in the end and would impose upon his 

 work the signs of the victory she had gained. Time is on her side 

 and her limitless patience takes no account of the lapse of centuries 

 when she has in view the ultimate working of her will upon a piece 

 of human effort of which she disapproves. He would be a foolish 

 person, too, because it is only by the closest alliance with nature that 

 he can hope to score any successes worth having when he is working 

 in the open air. If he has her on his side, and if he is sufficiently 

 conscious of her authority and sufficiently tolerant of her wilful ways, 

 much will be possible to him ; she will help him to do even more 

 than he realised to be within the scope of his invention, and she will 

 amplify his schemes with wonderful additions that are all her own. 

 He may have surprises ; but if he has breadth enough of mind to 

 understand what are the methods she employs, these surprises will be 

 enlightening and instructive, they will give him fresh openings for 

 the exercise of his intelligence, and they will suggest to him new 

 modes of dealing with the problems of his art. 



Happily the type of man who resents the claim of nature to have the 

 last word in the matters that concern her most is a decided rarity ; 

 civilisation, it is true, has produced a few abnormal individuals who 

 regard nature's freedom and dislike of any rules but her own as a sort 

 of indecency individuals who, whenever they can, enjoy cutting 

 down trees and paving with flag-stones any spaces where grass 

 might reasonably be expected to grow but persons of this highly 

 civilised kind usually confine their energies to borough councils and 

 such-like municipal bodies and do not often concern themselves much 

 with the art of garden-making. They sometimes, it must be con- 

 fessed, in the exercise of an authority unwisely entrusted to them, get 

 sadly in the way of people of more intelligence who are anxious that 

 nature should have a better chance of showing what she could make 

 even of the modern world ; but fortunately there is still a very great 

 majority of thinking men who love nature too well to allow those 

 who dislike her to do any serious amount of harm, 

 ii 



