THE THEORY OF GARDEN DESIGN 147 



that the garden is to be considered only as a place 

 for plants. In another article we will speak of design 

 on the assumption that the garden is also a place for 

 human beings, an assumption which must, of course, 

 have a considerable influence on the treatment of 

 flowers in it. 



II 



It is only in modern times that the garden has 

 come to be thought of as a home for flowers and not 

 for human beings. Mr. Mawson in his "Art and 

 Craft of Garden Making" says that the medieval 

 and Renaissance gardeners regarded the garden as 

 a "becoming setting to the mansion." The landscape 

 gardeners, beginning with Capability Brown, ignored 

 the home altogether in their designs, and also its 

 inhabitants. Civilized human beings were anachro- 

 nisms in their gardens, though Adam and Eve, in fine 

 summer weather, might have harmonized with them. 

 They were realists, Mr. Mawson says, and the older 

 designers were idealists. But in this case, as in many 

 others, common sense was with the idealists, since 

 their idealism was based upon plain facts. Gardens, 

 they knew, were meant to be inhabited, so far as our 

 climate would allow, by civilized human beings; and 

 they tried to make them as convenient as possible 

 for that purpose. The landscape gardeners, forget- 

 ting this fact, made their gardens as unhomely as 

 they could. They also had far less interest in horti- 

 culture than the earlier designers. They were in- 



