QADES 

 GARDEN WKS 



CHAPTER. IX. 



How slow we are to learn the lessons of breadth and repose which Nature is so 

 ready to teach us ! Swayed this way and that by the breath of fashion we first em- 

 bellish every square foot within and about our homes, then change and go to the other 

 extreme, and insipid flatness results. Nature's book, free to all who will cast away the 

 shibboleths of convention and read with an open mind, tells us that striking and vivid 

 contrasts should be used but seldom, and where employed, should be just sufficiently 

 marked to emphasize the quiet orderly restfulness of the scenes they enhance. The 

 contrasts presented by the lordly and rugged oak rising from the smooth meadow with 

 its gently swelling contours, the towering poplar breaking across the level lines of the 

 blue horizon, and the graceful tender foliage and white trunk of the silver birch springing 

 from the face of the rugged precipice, prove the universality of Nature's methods whether 

 in rural pasture, fenlands or rugged mountain scenery. She has, in the foliage of woods 

 and forests, vast stretches of beauty, restful in its tout ensemble, yet full of the most 

 charming detail, or broken masses arranged on rolling grassland in effective groupings, 

 the verdant grass forming a restful plane on to which are projected the shadows of the 

 trees in all their varying qualities. Thus, by open stretches of grass, a restful effect is 

 obtained, relieving the eye of too much detail, emphasizing the beauty of form and colour 

 in trees, shrubs and flowers, and forming green glades to carry the eye forward into 

 mellow distances. 



In no part of garden design and construction can we learn more from Nature and 

 her methods in the arrangement of pastoral scenery than in the making of lawns and green 

 glades. Every bit of rolling pasture is potentially a lawn, and the most distinctive 

 feature of our English scenery. 



Travellers tell us with what pride those in other lands, even in classic Italy, point 

 to their English gardens, which, however, can only copy their pattern to a limited extent, 

 for the chief feature, the green lawn, can only be maintained at great expense and as 

 an exotic, or is altogether lacking. Undoubtedly the fresh greensward which our humid 

 climate makes possible and natural to our gardens, is their greatest and most distinctive 

 asset, and, did we but realize this, we should cease to regard grass merely as a back- 

 ground or foundation for other things and treat it as a feature in itself. We should 

 cease to break up every stretch of green by dotting it all over with small exotics and 

 instead, frame it with masses or groups of foliage placed on the higher ground and 

 leaving the valleys free to form vistas and glades. Just as strains of music, heard 

 across a stretch of open water, are blended and harmonized, so is detail when viewed 

 across an open stretch of greensward, and individual trees blend into a harmonious whole. 



Green 



lawns 



distinctive 



features of 



English 



gardens. 



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