30 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



England not give effect to the beautiful lines of the landscape, and 

 make our gardens harmonise with them ? The right way is, to carry 

 no style in one's head or pocket, and then, before saying much, go 

 over the ground and see it from every point of view, with a view to 

 getting the best that the site, soil, and surroundings will give. If the 

 idea of the bastard Italian garden were the truest that could be 

 expressed by man, it must inevitably lead to monotony and to stereo- 

 typing of the garden, and it is only by respecting the site itself and 

 letting the plan grow out of it that we can get gardens free from 

 monotony, and suggestive also, as they should often be, of the country 

 in which they occur. If all our efforts only go to stereotyping the 

 home landscape, it is hardly worth while going for a change from the 

 Midlands into Devon. Why should we not in these islands of ours, 

 where there are so many different kinds of landscape and character- 

 istics of soil and climate, have gardens in harmony, as it were, with 

 their surroundings? Also the taste of the owner ought to count. 

 Why should he be bound to the conventional style ? As no one is so 

 likely to know the conditions of soil and climate, and the capabilities 

 of a district as one who has lived amidst them, if we come to 

 the aid of such an owner with an open mind as to style, we shall be 

 much better able to give effect to his views in the shape of artistic 

 and distinct results. 



Everywhere the ugliest things are seen, especially in the larger 

 places, but here and there one sees gardens that are beautiful, and 

 nothing will help us so well to a clear view of what is best in the 

 flower-garden as the consideration of such places, but we may first say 

 something of the new and wrong way of having no flowers near the 

 house. 



Those who notice the ground round country seats find now and 

 then a house without any flower garden, and with the turf running 

 hard into the walls the site of a flower garden without flowers. This 

 unhappy omission we may suppose to result from the ugliness in 

 summer, and nakedness in winter, of the common way of planting a 

 flower garden. 



But it is a mistake to suppose that the only alternatives to such 

 nakedness are coarse perennials and annuals, that flower a short 

 time and are weedy the rest of their days, or the ordinary summer- 

 planting. Many delightful things may be grown near a house ; 

 fragrant plants, too, plants beautiful not only in summer but in 

 colour even in winter. The ceaseless digging about of the beds 

 also may prejudice people against flowers in the garden, as the 

 bedding plants set out in June were taken away in autumn and 

 replaced by spring-flowering things. These had a short period of 

 bloom in spring, and were, in their turn, pulled up leaving bare beds 



