4 GARDENS IN THE MAKING 



and gardening especially lends itself to the acquire- 

 ment of multitudinous facts about individual 

 flowers. This does not engender humility, and, as 

 often as not, it breeds a prejudice against any serious 

 arrangement, and chiefly against the formality of 

 architectural planning. Yet this prejudice, like so 

 many others, is more wilful than wise ; it is the 

 fruit of a gentle anarchic state of mind which fails 

 to grasp the meaning of order and of design, and 

 which fancies that it allies itself with Nature that 

 Nature which, nevertheless, responds so lovingly to 

 the wise tuition of mankind. To those who still 

 refuse to allow the architect a place in their garden 

 councils, and who cling persistently either to the 

 Victorian taste or to the purer joys of the wild 

 garden and the " wilderness," we will submit only 

 one plea. We beg them, as they have time and 

 opportunity, to see the effect of rational planning in 

 those fine old gardens, chiefly of the seventeenth 

 century, that have reached such glorious maturity 

 on the lines long ago laid down ; and as lovers of 

 architecture, and as lovers of flowers, we ask them 

 to study the harmony, the fitness, and withal the 

 rich luxuriance which these methods, properly carried 



