i8o GARDEN-CRAFT. 



Mere neutral teaching can father nothing ; it can 

 never breed a system of stable device that is capable 

 of development. But old garden-craft is positive, 

 where the other is negative ; it has no niggling 

 scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment 

 except the unwritten laws" of good taste. Hence its 

 permanent value as a standard of device for every 

 gardener must needs desire the support of some 

 backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts 

 he must needs have some basis of form on which 

 to rest his own device, his own realisations of natural 

 beauty and what safer, stabler system of garden- 

 craft can he wish for than that of the old English 

 garden itself the outcome of a spacious age, well 

 skilled in the pictorial art and bent upon perfection ? 



The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are 

 beauty, animation, variety, mystery. A garden's 

 beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured by its 

 capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, 

 and we need not fear to use embellishment or strong 

 colour, or striking device, according to the adage 

 " The richly provided richly require." 



Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the 

 grace of a garden, because all gardening is Art or 

 nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art in a garden, 

 nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its 

 charm. I have no more scruple in using the scissors 

 upon tree or shrub, where trimness is desirable, than 

 I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that once 

 represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm 

 in the results of the topiary art, in the prim imagery 



