xvi INTRODUCTION 



wished to forget the ugliness of them in their gardens. 

 Thus it was that landscape gardening came into fash- 

 ion. It was an attempt to ignore the existence of the 

 house. Shrubberies were grown to hide it as best they 

 could, and paths twisted about in a vain reluctance 

 to approach it. But when men built beautiful houses 

 they had no desire for landscape or for any kind of 

 wild gardening. They were proud of their handiwork, 

 and did not look to nature or any pretence of nature 

 to conceal it from them. The garden was as much a 

 part of their conquest of nature as the house itself; 

 and, like the house, they designed it to be expressive 

 of the will and the purposes of man. So the house 

 and the garden were all part of one design, of which 

 the house was the centre, giving a purpose and mean- 

 ing to the whole; and this idea that the house shall 

 dominate and explain the garden is the principle upon 

 which all formal gardening is based, whereas all wild 

 gardening is based upon a despair of the house and 

 a desire to ignore it. 



Now that we are beginning to build beautiful houses 

 again, we are beginning also to design formal gardens 

 to suit them; but even those of us who must needs 

 live in ugly houses will do well to make the best of 

 them, as Morris advised. For, after all, even the 

 ugliest house cannot be ignored by those who live in 

 it; and no skill can really make a garden look like a 

 flowery Alpine meadow or a stretch of woodland. In- 

 deed, the uglier the house the more incongruous must 

 be the most plausible imitation of nature, whereas a 



