A LILY TANK 145 



tions or courts of my formal garden all this fidgetty 

 labour and worry of ugly noise would be unknown, 

 and the only sounds of its own need or making would 

 be the soothing and ever-delightful music of falling 

 and running water. 



Thoughts of this kind have come to me all the more 

 vividly within the last year or two when I have seen 

 in the gardens of friends the beautifully - coloured 

 forms of the newer Water-Lilies. Lovely as these 

 are in artificial pools or in natural ponds and quiet 

 back-waters, they would probably be still more beauti- 

 ful, or rather their beauty could be made still more 

 enjoyable, by their use in a four-square tank in the 

 Water-Lily court of a formal garden, one's mind all 

 the more readily inviting the connection because of 

 the recollection of the NyinphcEum of the ancient 

 Roman gardens, of tank or canal form, with stone- 

 paved walks shaded by a pillared portico, and of 

 Nyinphcea^ the botanical name of the Water-Lily. 

 There is a perfectly well-dressed look about those 

 Lilies, with their large leaves of simplest design, that 

 would exactly accord with masonry of the highest 

 refinement, and with the feeling of repose that is 

 suggested by a surface of still water. 



All gardening in which water plays an important 

 part implies a change of level in the ground to be 

 dealt with. I am taking as an example a place where 

 ground slopes away from the house, so that it demands 

 some kind of terraced treatment. First, there would 

 be the space next to the house ; its breadth having 

 due relation to the height of the building. From this 



