NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 



garden designer in making his plan for laying out a selected site. 

 The house stands at the top of a fairly steep slope along the brow of 

 which has been constructed a terrace with flights of steps leading 

 down to a stretch of grass-land below, and the part of the slope 

 immediately beneath the terrace has been converted into a wild rock 

 garden instead of being rigidly formalised, so that the terrace, while 

 serving well its purpose as a sort of base for the house, is not in any 

 way out of relation to the open park in which it is placed. In the 

 lower part of the grounds is a small lake overhung with trees and 

 planted round with a variety of shrubs and free-growing plants ; and 

 on the high ground at a little distance from the house is a walk 

 running beside a row of large yew-trees and bordered by a dwarf 

 terrace wall. 



Lowther Castle, the Westmoreland seat of the Earl of Lonsdale (Plates [/ 

 LXXXVII. to XCIII.), ranks among the greatest of the English 

 country houses and has gardens which are comparable with those in 

 even such famous show-places as Wilton or Blenheim. Within its 

 boundaries are examples of a great variety of types of garden-making, 

 and each one is a complete working out of the motive chosen as well 

 as an expression of a particular style. The most remarkable of these 

 gardens are " My Lady's Laurel Garden," a sunk lawn laid out with 

 flower beds which has at one end a terrace and on either side high, 

 sloping banks of trimmed laurels backed up by tall trees ; a very large 

 rose garden with a walk at its margin bordered with herbaceous 

 flower beds ; a " sweet-scented " garden planted with all kinds of 

 sweet-smelling herbs ; a topiary garden, a lawn with clipped yew- 

 trees on either side ; a Japanese garden ; and a Japanese iris garden. 

 In the Japanese garden the lakes, canals, bridges, trees, and other 

 details are all on a small scale but perfect in their relative proportion, 

 and the scheme of the whole thing is exquisitely carried out. Each 

 of these gardens is in a separate enclosure, so that there is no un- 

 pleasant jarring of styles. Other features of the Lowther Castle 

 grounds are a fine avenue of beeches and sycamores, an avenue of old 

 yew-trees, left in their natural growth, which make an arch over the 

 path beneath, and a great grass terrace thirty feet wide and about 

 three-quarters of a mile long and backed by fine woods. From this 

 terrace is seen a wonderful panorama of the valleys and hills of 

 Cumberland a vast expanse of some of the loveliest country in the 

 north of England. 



At Lytham Hall (Plates XCIV. and XCV.) there is a somewhat 

 similar arrangement of gardens kept separate from one another and 

 placed in different parts of the grounds. There is a flower garden 



xxix 



