144 THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



hollow places under terraces entirely artificial. In some cases they were not accessible, the floor spaces 

 being pools, with hidden mysteries of falling water, faintly visible distinctly to be heard. Or they were 

 cavernous cool retreats for hottest summer, with sprays of water rising from the floors and spouting from 

 the sides, and strange hydrostatic toys water-organs. The pool and tunnel grotto at Albury in Surrey, 

 part of the garden design of John Evelyn, were adapted from his recollection of the grottoes of Italian 

 gardens. He probably set the fashion for grottoes in English pleasure grounds, for many still remain. 

 They had their predecessors in ancient days, when in places near the sea they were sometimes lined with 

 sea-shells worked in patterns, or mosaics, or designs of curious stones. In the grottoes of the Renaissance 

 gardens we see audacious mixtures of natural and artificial rock, and roofs adorned with bold masses of 

 stalactite, so cleverly combined with architectural form and so completely harmonised by the water mosses 

 and other growths that there is no sense of incongruity ; only one of admiration for the boldness of the 

 artist s invention and the skill with which he has brought order out of chaos. 



Stairways are always beautiful in garden design ; nothing gives a more distinct impression of 

 nobility than a perspective of a succession of always ascending flights of steps rising into higher ground. 

 Especially is this so where the individual steps are long and shallow, with a moulded edge that gives a 

 shadow below, and when they are bounded by a balustrade of refined design. Then the balustrade runs 

 out to right and left, crowning the retaining wall of the terrace, and leaving the best of places below for 

 well-arranged groupings of plants in the flower border, itself one of the best of garden ornaments. There 

 is something peculiarly satisfying in stairways descending to water. There is a fine example at Stoneleigh 

 Abbey in Warwickshire, where there are important water-stairs and a stone embankment with 

 balustraded parapet. Such stairs were also worthily designed in the Italian villas that adjoined water, 

 as in those of the Italian lakes. 



Flagged terraces with porches were beautifully treated in the time of the English Renaissance ; 

 of these there are good examples at Bramshill in Hampshire and Fountains Hall in Yorkshire. Careful 

 planting will always enhance the value of beautiful architecture, but it must, indeed, be careful, and in 

 some cases studiously restrained. Nothing is more frequent than to see good architectural detail 

 smothered and obscured by masses of climbing plants. Here and there a cluster-rose may be allowed to 

 fling its long branches over the sculptured balustrade, or a clematis, jasmine or honeysuckle may lightly 

 drape it ; but to keep them within due bounds they need the most careful watching, guiding and 

 regulating. It is the work of the artist-gardener. 



Only too often handsome gate-piers may be seen choked with ivy, and walls of ornamental brick 

 work, with important copings, completely obliterated. Hut there is many a garden on sloping ground 

 where delicate architectural forms would be out of place, but where the steps are needed and also the 

 retaining wall. Here is the opportunity for making the stonework grow its own ornament by laying the 

 walling dry, that is to say, without mortar, but with earth joints, to be planted with all the good things 

 that are suitable. 



The parterre of the Italian garden took a firm hold in England, and showed a distinct development 

 on diverging lines. It giew into a design of bright flower masses rather than one of firmly-drawn outline. 

 In the Italian parterre the pattern was in strong lines of box-bordering, from two to three feet high and 

 wide. Frequently the whole design was planted in box. The garden at Balcarres shows one of the best 

 examples in our islands of a box-planted parterre ; there are others in English gardens, but perhaps none 

 that is so good in design or so entirely Italian in feeling. In the gardens of antiquity we learn that the 

 parterre was also solidly edged. Here it was always small. For one thing, they had but few kinds of 

 flowers rose, iris, jasmine, poppy, violet, narcissus and not many others. The gardens of Italy were 

 nearly always encompassed by masses of trees ilex and cypress for the most part. It is interesting 

 to observe that with us also those gardens are the most beautiful and restfully satisfying that have bounding 

 encirclements of large tree form ; the trees distant enough to allow plenty of air and sunlight, and for 

 the flowers to be safe from the most far-travelling roots, but so closely associated with the garden scheme 

 that they frame it distinctly, and do not allow the eye to travel into distant landscape. 



Parterre and wide, far-away view are too much material for one picture. The mind is distracted 

 between the two. But the tree-girt parterre is one complete picture ; and before or after it the distant 

 landscape, also suitably framed by trees, acquires its own value and becomes far more enjoyable. One 

 of the weaker points of the development of the parterre when the beds were set in gravel, was that the 

 gravel spaces became much too large ; quite out of proportion with the design. This is a frequent fault 

 in our gardens. It is not only unsightly in itself, but a waste of one of the best features of our pleasure 

 grounds, namely, their delightful expanse of that fine turf that comes to greater perfection here than in 

 any other country. 



Except in the case of bounding or sheltering walls of greenery, chiefly of box and ilex, which were 

 kept closely trimmed, there was very little of topiary work in the gardens of the Italian Renaissance. 

 In ancient time much more was done, and the topiarius was a chief among the slaves. But the clipping 

 of evergreens, either into neat walls or some symmetrical or ornamental pattern, has always been a 



