144 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



from those of any garden. One condition which the 

 garden eliminates is the struggle for life, with all its 

 reckless profusion. The gardener is not content that 

 a plant, when it has flowered and seeded, should take 

 its chance of being smothered by other plants that 

 flower later; and all that conflict and smothering, 

 which delight him at their most beautiful moments 

 in woodland and meadow as evidences of the prodigal- 

 ity of nature, would vex him in a garden, as mere 

 signs of idleness and neglect. Also, the plants in a 

 garden are not, like wild plants, all natives of one 

 country and harmonious either by association or by 

 some natural law. They come from many different 

 countries and natural conditions, and, unless arranged 

 with care, often look incongruous together. There- 

 fore, even if the gardener's one desire is to grow beau- 

 tiful plants and to display their beauty to the best 

 advantage, he must, at any rate, design his arrange- 

 ment of them on some principle both horticultural 

 and aesthetic, and he will often find it difficult to draw 

 a sharp line between the horticultural and the aesthetic 

 problem. Both the health and the beauty of a plant 

 are spoilt if it is smothered; and a plant which grows 

 naturally in some peculiar conditions will often neither 

 thrive nor look well in ordinary conditions and among 

 plants that grow naturally in such conditions. 



Directly the gardener begins to consider not merely 

 the beauty of the plant in itself, but the question of 

 its environment as affecting that beauty, he is drawn 

 into the whole question of garden design, at least in 



