TYPES OF GARDENS 



equal to some emergency which has arisen in connection with his 

 treatment of the subject that he has to handle. He must be able to 

 choose from among his memories of nature's way of dealing with a 

 similar situation the one which will best meet the exigencies of his 

 particular case, and he must be able to make this choice with the 

 confidence which comes from the knowledge that he has equipped 

 himself against all possible contingencies. What he learns he must 

 sort out and classify so that there may be no confusion in his mind 

 about the way in which he should use his experience and apply 

 practically the various kinds of information he has collected. 

 It must never be forgotten that the main purpose of the landscape 

 garden is to look as if it had grown up by a natural sequence of 

 events and not by the deliberate direction of the designer. The 

 evidences of human occupation which have to be introduced should 

 not be too emphatic ; they should seem to some extent accidental, 

 and as if they had been brought in simply to enable the occupier to 

 enjoy the beauty of the scenery in the midst of which he has chosen 

 to live. The paths must be placed where they would naturally be 

 trodden out by people passing backwards and forwards over the 

 ground and must follow consistently the configuration of the surface ; 

 their curves should not be arranged on any arbitrary system, but 

 should seem to have been determined by the necessity of avoiding 

 some impassable piece of shrubbery, or by the need for making at 

 an easy gradient a way up some awkward slope. They should not 

 be forced to wriggle about simply to avoid straight lines in places 

 where, as often as not, a straight walk would be the obvious thing 

 to expect. Seats, again, or summer-houses, should be put where 

 the shelter of the trees or the attractiveness of the view would be 

 likely to induce a wanderer to linger and rest. Lawns and flower 

 borders should be laid out only where the absence of dense masses 

 of overhanging foliage would suggest the possibility of grass growing 

 or flowers flourishing in natural clearings and open spaces. 

 Indeed, in a logical piece of gardening there would be nothing done 

 which could hint that the designer had set up his own preferences 

 against nature's intentions ; it would rather be implied that he had 

 tried to avoid any appreciable interference with her. Yet this 

 reticence of effect is by no means gained by leaving the garden to 

 take care of itself and to evolve a design, as it were, automatically. 

 The more complete the seeming unconsciousness of the scheme, the 

 more careful and considerate must be the methods of the garden- 

 maker, and the more scrupulous must be his observation of the 

 details by which the ultimate result is made interesting. If his 



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