CHAPTER XXVI. 



SIMPLER FLOWER GARDEN 

 PLANS AND THE RELA- 

 TION OF THE FLOWER 

 GARDEN TO THE HOUSE. 



A GREAT waste is owing to 

 frivolous and thoughtless "de- 

 sign " as to plan and shapes of 

 the beds in the flower-garden. 

 What a vision opens out to any 

 one who considers the design of 

 the flower garden when he 

 thinks of the curiosities and 

 vexations in the forms of beds 

 in almost every land where a 

 flower garden exists ! The 

 gardener is the heir to his 

 great misfortune of much use- 

 less complexity and frivolous 

 design, born of applying con- 

 ventional designs to the ground. 

 These designs come to us from 

 a remote epoch, and the design- 

 ing of gardens being from very 

 early times in the hands of the 

 decorative "artist," the garden 

 was subjected to their will, 

 and in our own days we even 

 see gardens laid without the 

 slightest relation to garden use, 

 difficult to plant, and costly to 

 form and to keep in order. At South Kensington the elaborate 

 tracery of sand and gravel was attractive to some when first set out, 



Type of complex parterre, copied out of books for all 

 sorts of situations. 



