THE PRECEDENT OF GARDEN DESIGN. 



No. i. " There is no error more prevalent in modern gardening, or more frequently 

 carried to excess, than taking away hedges to unite many small fields into 

 an extensive and naked lawn, before plantations are made to give it the ap- 

 pearance of a park ; and where ground is sub-divided by sunk fences, imaginary 

 freedom is dearly purchased at the expense of actual confinement." 



No. 2. " The baldness and nakedness round the house is part of the same mis- 

 taken system, of concealing fences to gain extent. A palace, or even an elegant 

 villa, in a grass field, appears to me incongruous ; yet I have seldom had 

 sufficient influence to correct this common error." 



No. 3. " An approach which does not evidently lead to the house, or which does 

 not take the shortest course, cannot be right. (This rule must be taken with 

 certain limitations. The shortest road across a lawn to a house will seldom 

 be found graceful and often vulgar. A road bordered by trees in the form of 

 an avenue, may be straight without being vulgar ; and grandeur, not grace or 

 elegance, is the expression expected to be produced.) 



No. 4. "A poor man's cottage, divided into what is called a pair of lodges is a 

 mistaken expedient to mark importance in the entrance to a Park. 



No. 5. " The entrance gate should not be visible from the mansion, unless it opens 

 into a court-yard." 



No. 6. " The plantation surrounding a place, called a Belt, I have never advised ; 

 nor have I ever willingly marked a drive, or walk, completely round the verge 

 of a park, except in small villas, where a dry path round a person's own field 

 is always more interesting to him than any other walk." 



No. 7. " Small plantations of trees, surrounded by a fence, are the best expedients 

 to form groups, because trees planted singly seldom grow well ; neglect of 

 thinning and removing the fence, has produced that ugly deformity called a 

 Clump." 



No. 8. " Water on an eminence, or on the side of a hill, is among the most common 

 errors of Mr. Brown's followers : in numerous instances I have been allowed to 

 remove such pieces of water from the hills to the valleys ; but in many my advice 

 has not prevailed. 



No. 9. " Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of NATURE ; thus 

 artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery, can only be great by deception, and the 

 mind acquiesces in the fraud, after it is detected : but in works of ART every 

 trick ought to be avoided. Sham churches, sham ruins, sham bridges, and 

 everything which appears what it is not, disgusts when the trick is discovered." 



No. 10. " In buildings of every kind the character should be strictly observed. 

 No incongruous mixture can be justified. To add Grecian to Gothic, or Gothic 

 to Grecian, is equally absurd ; and a sharp pointed arch to a garden gate or 

 a dairy window, however frequently it occurs, is not less offensive than Grecian 

 Architecture, in which the standard rules of relative proportions are neglected 

 or violated. 



' The perfection of landscape gardening consists in the fullest attention to 

 these principles Utility, Proportion, and Unity, or harmony of parts to the 

 whole." 



Brown and Repton had a host of imitators who followed one another in an ever 

 descending scale of puerile imitation, until the whole art of garden design was reduced 

 to the arrangement of the four factors of clumps of trees, belts of planting, single trees, 

 and " undulations " accompanied by sheets of water arranged according to one unvarying 

 stock design which differed only so far as the size of the estate made absolutely necessary. 



10 



