24 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



deeply interested in the question, one of the best places to consider it 

 is the upper terrace at Versailles, looking from the fine buildings there 

 to the country beyond, and seeing how graceless and inert the whole 

 vast design is, and how the clipped and often now dying, because 

 mutilated, Yews thrust their ugly forms into the landscape beyond 

 and rob it of all grace. To those who tell me this sort of work is 

 necessary to " harmonise " with the architecture I say there are better 

 ways, and that to rob fine buildings of all repose by a complex 

 geometrical " pattern in the foreground is often the worst way. 



Cost and care of stonework in gardens. Where stone or stucco 

 gardening is done on a large scale, its cost and maintenance are 

 monstrous. Even with the wealth of France, the repair of elaborate 

 stonework in gardens is a hopeless task, as any one may see at 

 Versailles or at the Crystal Palace. Is it in the interest of archi- 

 tecture tjiat noble means should be so wasted? As the cost and 

 difficulties of the finest work in building increase, the more the need 

 to keep it to its true and essential uses, especially in face of the fact 

 that half the houses in England require to be rebuilt if our architec- 

 ture generally is to prove worthy of its artistic aims. 



I delight in walls for my Roses, and build walls, provided they 

 have any true use as dividing, protecting, or supporting lines. To 

 take advantage of these and sunny sheltered corners in and about 

 our old or new houses, and make delightful little gardens in and 

 near them, as at Drayton or Powis, is quite a different thing from 

 cutting off the landscape with vast flat " patterns " and scroll-work, 

 as on the upper terrace at Versailles and at Windsor and many 

 gardens made in our own day. 



" Design " not formal only. I find it stated by writers on this 

 subject that " design " can only concern formality an error, as the 

 artistic grouping and giving picturesque effect to groups and groves 

 of Oak, Cedar, or Fir are far higher design than putting trees in lines. 

 There is more true and subtle design in Richmond Park and other 

 noble parks in England, where the trees are grouped in picturesque 

 ways and allowed to take natural forms, than in a French wood with 

 straight lines cut through it, which the first carpenter could design 

 as well as anybody else. In our own day a wholly different order of 

 things has arisen, because we have thousands of beautiful things 

 coming to us from all parts of the temperate and northern world, 

 and those who know them will not accept a book pattern design, 

 instead of our infinitely varied garden flora. The trees of North 

 America and Asia form a tree garden in themselves, and it is impos- 

 sible to lay out gardens of any size or dignity without a knowledge of 

 those and all other hardy trees, not only in a cultivated but in a wild 

 state. If anything demands special study, it is that of garden design 



