266 How to Make a Flower Garden 



of vista such as might suggest gUmpses through the wrong end of a telescope. 

 In the center I placed my " Dedication," or key-stone, a ragged slab on end 

 with a bold, smooth face, ready for inscription. Following traditions, I 

 placed my garden with its back to the north ; and from the other three points 

 of the compass I made sketches, each with salient features invisible in the 

 other two. From these "elevations" I blended a "plan." The lakelet 

 and the hills were then staked out in no haphazard way. For every inlet 

 there was a reason. Every hill formed a screen of malice aforethought. 



The lake was made about fifty feet long, well grouted and gravelled, 

 to hold a foot of water. On the west side three immense stones formed 

 the entrance to a cave into which the waters of the lake followed, or, more 

 properly speaking, out of which the waters poured. The plashing of a 

 hidden waterfall came out from the cool of the grotto. A second source 

 of supply was arranged to creep through the dry lake to the south, grown 

 with rank weeds and iris. The third supply was in the shape of a small 

 mountain torrent shooting under a rustic sod bridge. Then the electricians 

 buried their wires, safely protected from moisture in lead pipes, and leading 

 to fifteen standard lanterns. Here it was that I fell from grace in not adhering 

 to the strict traditions of the classical garden. My desire for fairy effects 

 turned me to the more plebeian models, and I found in the tea-garden an 

 excuse for illumination. I therefore added a dozen wooden-post lanterns 

 to my three monumental stone lanterns. 



Aly "principal hill," eight feet high, was built over the grotto, and 

 with two foothills formed a crescent chain of mountains against the lake. 

 The foothills were sundered by a chasm bridged over with a great stone slab. 



Then came the placing of the stones. With no professional landscape 

 gardener to hamper me, and with the assistance of a stone-boat, an intelligent 

 team, a stupid driver, and my ordnance sergeant, who had learned obedience 

 m the army, I revelled in stones. I planted and replanted; I squmted down 

 lanes and vistas until each stone satisfied me. 



With rye straw I thatched the gate in the north, and also a second 

 summer house on the Principal Hill over the grotto. j\Iy fences were made 

 of bamboo fishing-poles tied with rough hemp rope. I built an impossible 

 red bridge over the dry arm of the lake. It is a facsimile of the one in the 

 Wistaria Garden at Kameido, Tokio. Here agam I borrowed from the 

 "pleasure garden," but I needed a bit of colour to balance the red sacred 

 gate leading to my fox-god shrine at the northern end. 



