THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



idea only that I urge here, but that of all who have ever thought 

 of the beauty of trees, foremost among whom we must place 

 artists who have the happiness of always drawing natural forms. 

 Let any one stand near the Cedar-like Yews by the Pilgrim's Way 

 on the North Downs, and, comparing them with trees cut into 

 fantastic shapes, consider what the difference means to the artist who 

 seeks beauty of tree form ! 



What right have we to deform things so lovely in form? No 

 cramming of Chinese feet into impossible shoes is half so foolish 

 as the wilful and brutal distortion of the beautiful forms of trees. 

 The cost of this mutilation alone is one reason against it, as we 

 see where miles of trees cut into walls have to be clipped, as at 

 Versailles and Schonbrunn, and this shearing is a mere " survival " 

 of the day when we had very few trees, and they were clipped to fit 

 the crude notion of " garden design " of the day. The fact that men 

 when they had few trees made them into walls to make them serve 

 their ways of " design " is no reason why we, rich in the trees of all 

 the hills of the north, should go on mutilating them too. 



Thus, while it may be right to clip a tree to form a dividing-line or 

 hedge, it is never so to clip trees grown for their own sakes, as by 

 clipping such we only get ugly, unnatural forms. Men who trim with 

 shears or knife so fine a tree as the Holly are dead to beauty of form 

 and cannot surely have seen how fine in form old Holly trees are. To 

 give us such ugly forms in gardens is to show one's self callous to 

 beauty of tree form, and to prove that one cannot even see ugliness. 

 For consider, too, the clipped Laurels by which many gardens are 

 disfigured. Laurel in its natural shape in the woods is often fine in 

 form ; but it is planted everywhere in gardens without thought of its 

 fitness for each place, and as it grows apace, the shears are called in, 

 and its fine leaves and shoots are cut into ugly banks and formless 

 masses, spoiling many gardens. There is no place in which Laurel 

 is clipped for which we could not get shrubs of the desired size that 

 would not need the shears. 



In the old gardens, where from other motives trees were clipped 

 when people had very few evergreens, or where they wanted an 

 object of a certain height, they had to clip. It is well to preserve such 

 gardens, but never to imitate them. If we want shelter, we can get it 

 in various pleasant ways without clipping, and, while getting it, we can 

 enjoy the natural forms of the evergreens. Hedges and wall-like lines 

 of green living things are useful, and even may be artistically used. 

 Occasionally we find clipped arches and bowers pretty, and these, 

 when very old, are worth keeping. Besides, there is much difference 

 between evergreen archways or bowers, hedges, and shelters, and the 

 fantastic clipping of living trees into the shapes of bird or beast or 



