2 The Garden Beautiful 



England have been made in Victorian days : the Crystal 

 Palace, the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at 

 Kensington, Shrubland, Witley Court, Castle Howard, 

 Mentmore, Crewe Hall, Alton Towers, and many places 

 in every county. During the whole of that period 

 there was hardly a country seat laid out that was not 

 marred by the idea of a garden as a conventional and 

 patterned thing. So far from formal gardens being 

 abolished, as the Irish peasant said of absentees, ' the 

 country is full of them ! ' With Castle Howards, Trent- 

 hams, and Chatsworths staring at him, it is ludicrous 

 to see a young architect weeping over their loss. Even 

 when there is no money to waste in needless walls and 

 gigantic water-squirts, the idea of the terrace is still 

 carried out often in plains, and in the shape of green 

 banks piled one above the other, as if they were an 

 artistic treat. There are hundreds of such gardens 

 about the country, and the ugliest and most formally 

 set out and planted gardens ever made in England 

 were formed in Victorian days, when we are told by 

 writers who do not look into the facts that all these 

 things were lost. 



It cannot be too clearly seen that 'formal' gardens 

 of the most deplorable type are things of our own 

 time, as it is only in our own time that the common 

 idea that there is only one way of making a garden 

 has been spread. Hence, in all the newer houses we 

 see the stereotyped garden often made in spite of all 

 the needs of the ground, whereas in old times it was not 

 so, because in those days the stereotyped plans were 

 not in every office and people had to think of the ground 

 itself. Berkeley is not the same as Sutton, and Sutton 

 is quite different from Haddon. 



