154 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



and it is formalized because it considers human beings 

 as well as plants. A great many rock plants may be 

 grown in it so that their beauty will show to the great- 

 est advantage. In fact, now that we have so many 

 rock plants, unknown to our ancestors or neglected 

 by them, Dutch gardens may be made more beau- 

 tiful than ever before, with sheets of Lithospermum 

 prostratum interspersed with Arenaria montana, with 

 contrasts of Silene alpestris and Campanula muralis 

 or of Veronica prostrata and the yellow Helianthemum. 

 All these will harmonize with the blind bow-boy or 

 the dancing fountain just as well as the customary 

 duller plants; and their flowers will shine as much 

 against smooth masonry as against rough-hewn rocks. 

 A Dutch garden is intended for the display of flowers 

 in detail, and no better place has ever been contrived 

 for that purpose. 



There is one great advantage which the modern 

 designer has over his predecessors, and that is in the 

 use which he can make of steep banks and slopes. 

 These, since they are obviously inconvenient resting- 

 places for human beings, should be treated by the 

 designer as spaces to be decorated. The older de- 

 signers, apparently, despaired of decorating them 

 with flowers, and therefore built them up, when they 

 had the money, with walls a very costly process. 

 The naturalists usually covered them with turf or 

 with the few varieties of shrubs, usually ugly and 

 uninteresting, that would thrive on them. But now, 

 luckily, we know of many beautiful flowers that will 



