TANKS IN GARDEN DESIGN 139 



simple human need for the solace of a quiet garden, 

 plentifully watered and well furnished with beautiful 

 flowers and foliage and noble tree-form, as shown 

 in the garden courts in the hearts of these fortress- 

 palaces of many centuries ago. 



How beautiful some of these walled and fountained 

 courts are, not only in Spain, but in many a southern 

 and Oriental land, and all the more beautiful when 

 they are simply planted with just the few things that 

 seem to have been there from all time. Perhaps a 

 Pomegranate with its scarlet bloom and ruddy sun- 

 browned fruit, and a large-flowered Jasmine ; a 

 Lemon-tree, yielding shade and perfume ; and, shoot- 

 ing up straight and tall, the pink willow-like wands 

 of the rose-bloomed Oleander ; while giving grateful 

 shade within, though growing in some outer garden 

 space, there is a group of Date Palm or a giant Ilex, 

 a Sweet Bay or a Terebinth. 



Tanks of water combined with beds of flowers and 

 cool greenery formed an essential part of the Roman 

 and Graeco-Roman houses of old, as we know and can 

 see to this day in the well-preserved remains of the 

 houses of Pompeii, where the pillared peristylium 

 enclosed a garden with fountains and tanks. The 

 annexed illustration of a Pompeian house shows 

 the peristylium some fifteen paces forward, the 

 shallow tank in the foreground being the impluvium 

 in the central space of the atrium or main hall of 

 the building. Above the impluvium an open space 

 in the roof admitted the rain water. 



The best of the basins with high parapets may be 



