206 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



flowers which has made gardening a popular art in 

 England. 



In other countries, where there is not the same 

 love of growing flowers, the palace and not the cot- 

 tage garden sets the standard, and therefore gar- 

 dening is not a popular art; for the poor man cannot 

 hope to compete with the rich in the way of palatial 

 gardens, any more than in the way of palatial archi- 

 tecture. But he can compete with the rich in the 

 growing of plants since he can grow his plants for 

 himself, whereas the rich man must hire a gardener 

 to do it for him. Thus in England many a rich man 

 has envied the beauty of a cottage garden, and tried 

 to imitate it in his own; but abroad little gardens, 

 when there are any, are apt to be imitations of the 

 gardens of the rich; and in Italy or France it is the 

 sumptuous gardens that delight us with their terraces 

 and avenues and cascades, whereas in England we 

 get most pleasure from the little flowery patches and 

 clipped yew hedges and arches by the roadside. For- 

 eigners sometimes wonder how it is that, with all our 

 great poets, our common life seems to be so prosaic. 

 The poetry of the English nature expresses itself in 

 gardens as the poetry of the German nature in folk- 

 song; and by means of gardens it is intimately con- 

 nected with our common life. Once it expressed it- 

 self also in building, and more directly and clearly 

 in the homelier kinds of building than in great cathe- 

 drals or palaces. Once we had a true folk-art in our 

 cottages and farmhouses as well as in our gardens. 



