26 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



times on level ground the terrace walls cut off the landscape from 

 the house, and, on the other hand, the house from the landscape ! 



We may get every charm of a garden and every use of a country 

 place without sacrificing the picturesque or beautiful ; there is no 

 reason, either in the working or design of gardens, why there should 

 be a false line in them ; every charm of the flower garden' may be 

 secured by avoiding the knots and scrolls which subordinate all the 

 plants and flowers of a garden, all its joy and life, to a conventional 

 design. The true way is the opposite. With only the simplest plans 

 to ensure good working, we should see the flowers and feel the 

 beauty of plant forms, and secure every scrap of turf wanted for 

 play or lawn, and for every enjoyment of a garden. 



Time and Gardens. Time's effect on gardens is one of the 

 main considerations. Fortress-town and castle moat are now without 

 further use, where in old days gardens were set within the walls. To 

 keep all that remains of such gardens should be our first care never 

 to imitate them now. Many are far more beautiful than the modern 

 gardens, which by a wicked perversity have been kept bare of plants 

 or flower life. At one time it was rash to make a garden away from 

 protecting walls ; but when the danger from civil war was past, then 

 arose the often beautiful Elizabethan house, free from all moat or 

 trace of war. 



In those days the extension of the decorative work of the house 

 into the garden had some novelty to carry it off, while the kinds of 

 evergreens were very much fewer than now. Hence if the old 

 gardeners wanted an evergreen hedge or bush of a certain height, 

 they clipped a Yew tree to the form and size they wanted. Not- 

 withstanding this, we have no evidence that anything like the flat 

 monotony often seen in our own time existed then. To-day the 

 ever-growing city, pushing its hard face over our once beautiful land, 

 should make us wish more and more to keep such beauty of the earth 

 as may be still possible to us, and the railway embankments, where 

 once were the beautiful suburbs of London, cry to us to save all we 

 can save of the natural beauty of the earth. 



Architecture and Flower Gardening)- The architect is a good 

 gardener when he makes a beautiful house. Whatever is to be done 

 or considered afterwards, one is always helped and encouraged by its 

 presence ; while, on the other hand, scarcely any amount of skill in 

 gardening softens the presence of an ugly building. No one has 

 more reason to rejoice at the presence of good architecture than the 

 gardener and planter, and all stonework near the house, even in the 

 garden, should be dealt with by the architect. 



But when architecture goes beyond this limit, and seeks to replace 



1 Read before the Architectural Association on Friday, December 16, 1893. 



