THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



man ask an architect if it would not answer to 

 give his plan to the contractor and let him work 

 it out without the architect's supervision. 



"My dear sir," the architect repHed, "you 

 wouldn't know the corpse." 



I suppose one reason why even the miscopy- 

 ing of gardens provokes so little offence is that 

 the acts it mimics have no art it can murder. 

 Mrs. Budd sets out her one little "high ge- 

 raingia" in the middle of her tiny grass-plat 

 (probably trimming it to look like a ballet- 

 dancer on one leg). Whereupon Mrs. Mudd, 

 the situation of whose house and grounds is 

 not in the least like her neighbor's, plants and 

 trims hers the same way and feels sure it has 

 the same effect, for — why shouldn't it ? 



The prize-winning copyist I am telling of 

 copied principles only. To have copied mere 

 performance would have been particularly un- 

 lucky, for though his garden stands within 

 fifty yards of the one from which it drew its 

 inspiration the two are so differently located 

 that the same art principles demand of them 

 very different performances. An old-time lover 



144 



