148 STUDIES IN GAKDENING 



clined to leave that, like everything else, to nature. 

 But, in spite of them, the deep-rooted English delight 

 in flowers persisted and increased all through the 

 nineteenth century; and since it was no longer con- 

 trolled by the old principles of garden design, the 

 cultivation of flowers became the chief purpose of 

 pleasure gardening, until at the present day most 

 people would stare if it were suggested to them that 

 pleasure gardening ought to have any other purpose. 

 And yet it is plain enough that a pleasure garden is 

 meant to give pleasure to human beings and should 

 be designed with that object. Let it be as beautiful 

 as it can be made, since beauty is one of the main 

 elements of pleasure, but let its beauty, like that of 

 a living room, be controlled by use. Have as many 

 flowers as you like, but think of them, not as the 

 reason for the garden's existence, but as its ornaments, 

 as you would think of the ornaments of a living room. 

 A museum may be interesting, but it is not a place 

 to live in; nor yet is a garden that is a mere museum 

 of plants. If garden designers would forget the quarrel 

 about formal and realistic gardens and design only 

 for pleasure and comfort they would avoid many 

 of the errors into which they commonly fall. If pleasure 

 and comfort were their main objects they would al- 

 ways make the best of existing conditions. They 

 would not try to turn a suburban slip of ground into 

 a wilderness or a wild hillside into a tea garden. Their 

 problem would be simplified, because it would become 

 concrete instead of abstract, just as the painter's 



