xviii INTRODUCTION 



have acquired a natural fitness of combination and 

 arrangement, which art may improve with its greater 

 variety of material, but should not ignore. It used 

 to be the delight of gardeners to ignore this natural 

 fitness. As Ruskin remarked, they would tear house- 

 leeks from their roofs and plant them round their 

 beds. It was their practice to seize on the abnormal- 

 ities of nature and make them the rule in the garden, 

 although such abnormalities are usually the result of 

 adaptation to peculiar conditions and look utterly 

 out of place except in those conditions. Most Cacti, 

 for instance, are desert plants, and may have a beauty 

 of their own when they grow among rocks and sand. 

 They have none at all in a flower-bed. The return to 

 nature has taught us to see the absurdity of carpet 

 bedding and all such misuses of natural materials. 

 It has quickened our sense of the fitness of things, 

 so that the best gardeners now delight in growing 

 plants in conditions that will show off their beauty to 

 the best advantage. It is the business of formal gar- 

 dening, as of every other art, to do this; to make its 

 own design, and at the same time to obey the laws of 

 its material that is to say, to use its material so 

 that its characteristic beauty may be displayed to the 

 best advantage. 



To combine these two things, formal beauty of de- 

 sign and a right use of material, is the main difficulty 

 of every art, and it is peculiarly difficult in gardening. 

 There is always a strong naturalistic tendency in the 

 gardener who loves his plants, as in the landscape 



