XXI.. 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



craftsman in metal has found high opportunities of displaying 

 his skill. But, whatever be its individual character, the 

 garden of our choice, a William Morris said, should look 

 both orderly and rich, anJ it should be well fenced from the 

 outside world. It should " look like a thing never to be seen 

 except near a house, and should, in fact, look like a part of the 

 house." 



This is no meaningless saying, because it is in the garden 



Cofyright. 



THE KNEELING SLAVE IN LEAD AT MELBOURNE. 



that the house-dweller wins Nature to himself. In " The 

 Garden that 1 Love" Mr. Alfred Austin has expressed some 

 truths felicitously. " A garden that one makes oneself 

 becomes associated with one's personal history and that of 

 one's friends, interwoven with one's tastes, preferences, and 

 character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten but withal 

 manifest autobiography." And yet it is even better when we 

 can read in it also the history of men who have gone before, 

 and when, as the same writer says, the garden character is 



governed by the house, its time-consecrated architecture, us 

 immovable boundaries, the old oak and the ineradicable old 

 timber within sit>ht, and thus by the general fitness of things. 

 " I am quite of opinion that a garden should look as though 

 it belonged to the house, and the house as though it were 

 conscious of and approved the garden. In passing from one to 

 the other, one should experience no sense of discord, but the 

 sensations produced by the one should be continued, with a deli- 

 cate difference, by the other." 

 There is thus abundant 

 room for individuality in 

 garden work. The house is no 

 dumb thing to the labourer in 

 this field. It suggests to him 

 a character and inspires him 

 with the ideas of design. 

 From its features he learns 

 how to call the craftsman in 

 stone or metal to ills aid. If 

 his be an old garden, where 

 the ancient worker has com- 

 pleted an appropriate con- 

 ception already, there is still 

 room, in the embodiment of 

 the new triumphs of the 

 florist, or in vary ng the inner 

 disposition of the pleasaunce, 

 for manifold successes. But 

 the true lover of the garden 

 will make a way for himself. 

 He will reject nothing of 

 floral beauty, which is after 

 all the chiefest of the 

 gardener's means, and there 

 will be no time of the year in 

 which his garden is devoid of 

 radiance. His garden is a 

 romantic realm of never-failing 

 charm, even tnough small 

 it be. Fortunate s he who 

 looks out from his terrace 

 with its mossy parapet, where 

 the peacock, perchance, 

 shakes out its purple glories, 

 to such a world of his own. 

 Roses are clustering on the 

 wall, or flinging out their 

 fragrance below in the sun, 

 mingled with the rare perfume 

 of the aromatic azalea. Along 

 the edge of the lawn his 

 flower-border is glorious with 

 the queenly lily, the dark 

 blue monk's-hood, the tall 

 hollyhock, the spiked veronica, 

 the red lychnis, radiant 

 phloxes, proud paeonies, the 

 tall spires of foxgloves and 

 larkspurs, and a multitude 

 of fair denizens of the par- 

 terre. Richness characterises 

 the whole, and the sentinel 

 yews, the hedges, and box 

 edgings, are there to give 

 order and distinction, with the 

 right degree or formality that 

 belongs to the structure that 

 is adorned. The moral sundial, the splashing fountain, 

 the sheltered arbour, and the fragrant pergola, all have their 

 places in such a garden. Nor need the landscape, and the 

 woodland with the lake, be contemned. These lie outside the 

 enclosed gardens, and all are beautiful and entrancing in their 

 degree and place. The final fact is simple after all, and the 

 garden designer must make it his own. It is that the house 

 and the garden are the two parts of a single whole, and happy 

 is he who can best interpret their sweet relationship. 



" Country Lijc." 



