1 8 . THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN 



whereas in our sham examples of the Italian garden all is as flat 

 and lifeless as a bad mosaic. 



TERRACED GARDENS, allowing of much building (apart from the 

 house), have been much in favour with architects who have designed 

 gardens. The landscape gardener, too often led by custom, falls in 

 with the notion that every house, no matter what its position, should 

 be fortified by terraces, and he busies himself in forming them even 

 on level ground, and large sums are spent on fountains, vases, statues, 

 balustrades, useless walls, and stucco work, where these are out of 

 place. By the extensive use of such materials many a noble lawn is 

 cut up ; and often, as at Witley Court, the " architectural " gardening 

 is pushed so far into the park as to curtail and injure the view. If 

 the cost of the stone and stucco ornament lavished on the garden 

 were spent on its legitimate object the house how much better it 

 would be for architecture, as well as for gardening ! 



The best effect is to be got not by carrying architectural features 

 into the usually small level town garden, but by the contrast between 

 the garden vegetation and its built surroundings. This contrast 

 should be got, not by the sham picturesque, with rocks, cascades, 

 and undulations of the ground, but mainly by the simple dignity 

 of trees and the charm of turf. It was said that none but an Italian 

 garden would suit South Kensington, and we had an elaborate garden 

 there carried out with the greatest care, yet the result, as everybody 

 knows, was miserable. There are many private gardens in European 

 cities, with as formal surroundings as those of South Kensington, 

 which are as beautiful as it was stiff and ugly. 



Elaborate terraced gardens in the wrong place often prevent the 

 formation of beautiful lawns, though a good lawn is the happiest thing 

 in a garden. For many years past there has been so much cutting 

 up, geometry and stonework, that it is rare to find a good lawn left, 

 and many a site cut up would be vastly improved if changed into a 

 large, nobly fringed lawn. A very common, poorly built house with a 

 fine open lawn has often a better effect than a fine one with a recti- 

 lineal garden and terraces in front of it, though there are cases where 

 tvalls would be the way to a good result. 



A style of garden " design " that for a long time has had an 

 injurious effect on many places is the "railway embankment" phase 

 of landscape gardening madness one in which we see a series of 

 sharply graded grass slopes, exactly like well-smoothed railway 

 embankments. It is curious that any one should imagine that such a 

 plan, marring the whole landscape, should give pleasure to any human 

 being, or do anything but make the foreground of the house weari- 

 some to the last degree. In this variety we often find several 

 sharp banks falling one below the other without a protecting wall 



