FLOWER GARDENS 55 



advancement of the art to an extent of which we can 

 hardly form an adequate conception. 



As the number of those practising the art of landscape 

 gardening in an earnest, serious, and dignified way is the 

 best indication of substantial advance, a rapidly increas- 

 ing gathering of thoroughly equipped men who have 

 devoted themselves with a single mind to landscape gar- 

 dening can be pointed to in many notable cities of this 

 and other countries. It is because it is a democratic 

 art, one which makes its appeal to the great masses 

 instead of to the few only, that gardening, as we under- 

 stand it, is in such thorough sympathy with the spirit of 

 our democratic age. 



The sum and substance of these reflections bring us to 

 the conclusion that the field of genuine gardening art is 

 so widely open to us that we need not be awed by the 

 great examples of garden-making done in past time, for 

 the more we study, the more we realize that the recorded 

 facts do not bear out the belief that gardening designs 

 have been done in the past as well as they are done to- 

 day, and that the study, therefore, of old examples of the 

 Italian villas and gardens, and even illustrations of much 

 later French and German parks and country places, is 

 becoming less important in the light of the larger the- 

 ory of landscape gardening which seeks to produce a 

 beautiful, because primarily sensible, arrangement of the 

 present development of flowers, trees, shrubs, and lawns. 



In old times they did not have these advantages of 

 superior lawn planting material, nor did they have, ap- 

 parently, any idea of the importance of making a sensible 

 design for arranging the different beauties and conven- 

 iences of home grounds, so that each part would be 

 properly related to the others, and the garden take its 



