CHAPTER XVIII 



A LILY TANK IN A FORMAL GARDEN 



WHENEVER I have seen the large formal gardens 

 attached to important houses of the Palladian type 

 that are so numerous throughout England, I have 

 always been struck by their almost invariable lack 

 of interest and want of any real beauty or power of 

 giving happiness. For at the risk of becoming 

 wearisome by a frequent reiteration of my creed 

 in gardening, I venture to repeat that I hold the 

 firm belief that the purpose of a garden is to give 

 happiness and repose of mind, firstly and above all 

 other considerations, and to give it through the 

 representation of the best kind of pictorial beauty 

 of flower and foliage that can be combined or in- 

 vented. And I think few people will deny that this 

 kind of happiness is much more often enjoyed in 

 the contemplation of the homely border of hardy 

 flowers than in many of these great gardens, where 

 the flowers lose their attractive identity and with it 

 their hold of the human heart, and have to take a 

 lower rank as mere masses of colour filling so many 

 square yards of space. Gardens of this kind are 

 only redeemed when some master-mind, accepting 

 the conditions of the place as they are, decides on 



