Garden design and recent writings upon it 7 



true sense the art is not possible without knowledge of 

 many beautiful living things, and that the right planting 

 of a country place is of tenfold greater importance than 

 the ground-plan about the house. 



In many books on garden design the authors misuse 

 words and confuse ideas. Many, not satisfied with the 

 good term, ' landscape gardener/ used by Loudon, 

 Repton, and many other excellent men, call themselves 

 * landscape architects ' a stupid term of French origin 

 implying the union of two absolutely distinct studies, 

 one dealing with varied life in a thousand different kinds 

 and the natural beauty of the earth, and the other with 

 stones and bricks and their putting together. The train- 

 ing for either of these arts is wide apart from the training 

 demanded for the other, and the earnest practice of one 

 leaves no time, even if there were the genius, for the 

 other. 



Landscape gardening. The term ' landscape planting ' 

 is often scoffed at by these writers, yet it is a good one 

 with a clear meaning, which is the grouping and growth 

 of trees in natural forms as opposed to the universal 

 aligning, clipping, and shearing of the Dutch; the natural 

 incidence of light and shade and breadth as the true 

 guide in all artistic planting. The term ' landscape gar- 

 dening' is a true and, in the fullest sense, good English 

 one, with a clear and even beautiful meaning, namely, 

 the study of the forms of the earth, and frank acceptance 

 of them as the best of all for purposes of beauty or use of 

 planter or gardener, save where the surface is so steep 

 that one must alter it to work upon it. 



We accept the varied slopes of the river bank and the 

 path of the river as not only better than those of a Dutch 

 canal, but a hundred times better; and not only for their 



