The Naturalistic Garden 75 



predisposes us toward nature and naturalistic methods. A traveller 

 in Italy can usually tell at a glance where English people are living 

 in the villas there by the intrusion of landscape effects, with masses 

 of shrubbery and herbaceous borders into the purely Italian plan 

 of the estate. Features so entirely out of keeping with their 

 environment have seriously marred the beauty of not a few fine 

 old villas. But how 7 fitting and altogether charming are the oaks 

 and beeches that stretch their giant branches with picturesque 

 abandon across the velvet of English lawns, the clumps of shrub 

 bery that all but conceal the paths beyond its gently flowing curves, 

 the irregular borders filled with old-fashioned perennials that are 

 as characteristically English as Yorkshire pudding! 



For the discerning few, who know when and how to apply 

 Italian principles of garden design to some of our own problems, 

 they must ever afford artistic satisfaction, which is not to say, 

 however, that naturalistic treatment may not quite as thoroughly t 

 satisfy one s artistic ideals for other kinds of garden problems. 

 But even where a house of classically severe architecture demands 

 architectural planting immediately around it, formality should 

 gradually emerge into more and more freedom of line, the farther / 

 away the planting recedes from the house until finally the 

 naturalistic is lost in wild nature itself. 



However great may be one s intellectual enjoyment of a 

 faultless piece of formal garden composition, one is compelled to 

 really love far better the little cottage garden where roses tangle 

 over the doorway, hollyhocks peep in through the lattice, tawny 

 orange lilies that have escaped through the white picket fence 

 brighten the roadside, clematis festoons fleecy clouds of bloom 

 over the unpruned bushes along a lichen-covered wall where 

 chipmunks play hide and seek, and tall, unkempt lilacs send their 



