TYPES OF GARDENS 



gardening and of arboriculture, and that the designer must have a 

 love for, and a knowledge of, the many beautiful forms of plant life 

 ready at hand, wherewith to make his garden of delight. 

 " The designer of the ideal garden, having no particular scruples 

 about the lines of nature to interfere with his plans, would design in 

 a straightforward, coherent way, considering a straight walk, if more 

 convenient, to be the most capable of artistic treatment, and also 

 assuming that natural objects within the garden must be drilled into 

 position, and if necessary have their wildness tamed. Throughout, 

 his designs would for the most part depend upon combination of 

 line ; for instance, the various flower gardens or tennis lawns would 

 be planned with straight lines, and these would have their divisions, 

 whether hedges or other arrangements, so treated as to express at 

 once their use. To get shade, instead of creating it entirely by 

 means of loose masses or clumps of trees, he would obtain it by 

 means of alleys, covered bowers, pergolas or avenues, each of which 

 would show at once the designer's intention. Thus, whilst enjoying 

 the shade, the owner of the garden would cherish a kindly thought 

 for the man who had considered his need ; and who, in the dis- 

 position of every feature, had secured in an open and straightforward 

 way so complete a grasp of his requirements. 



" Although preferring invention, the true garden designer will 

 endeavour to give a purely individual rendering to his work, having 

 due regard for such existing natural features sufficiently interesting to 

 warrant preservation, and requiring only a little skill to bring them 

 into congenial harmony with the composition. The stronger a man's 

 love of art is, the more will he appreciate nature ; it is only when he 

 tries to mimic her that artists quarrel with him. Nature may and 

 should inspire us, but it was never meant that we should copy her 

 weakness, or lose the teaching of her strength and dignity." 

 As the opinion of an expert with particular qualifications this passage 

 deserves to be taken with all possible seriousness. Some of Mr. 

 Mawson's greatest successes have been made in the designing of 

 purely formal gardens, but he has the catholicity and breadth of taste 

 to see that there are plenty of occasions on which absolute formality 

 must be departed from or even abandoned because there are existing 

 natural features which must be reckoned with and taken into account 

 by the designer. These natural features may be so salient, so im- 

 portant, that they will dictate to the maker of the garden the course 

 that he must follow from the very first roughing out of his plan ; 

 or they may be of only sufficient prominence to require humouring 

 and a certain amount of adaptation to make them helpful in a more 

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