Formal 

 Canals. 



THE DECORATIVE TREATMENT OF WATER. 



form a bathing pond, and even though the pond must be fed with collected surface 

 water supplemented by the domestic supply, facilities may be provided for those residents 

 or guests who belong to the increasing number of persons who delight to begin the day 

 with a vigorous cold plunge taken in the open air. A more elaborate arrangement which 

 would in itself form a decorative adjunct to the general garden scheme, is shown in 

 illustration No. 254, and is designed to accompany an Elizabethan mansion, while the 

 simple hut for disrobing shown in the first example is replaced with a comfortable and 



convenient dressing 

 room. A bathing pond 

 may often be contrived 

 very cheaply on those 

 rugged portions of the 

 coast which are not 

 suited to shore bathing 

 by enclosing a small 

 creek with a simple 

 sluice to retain the tide 

 water. 



Every bathing pond 

 should, of course, have 

 a means of emptying, 

 as this will be frequently 

 necessary, or decaying 

 vegetable matter, which 

 inevitably collects there, 

 will become offensive 

 when the water is stirred 

 up by a bather. 



The large architec- 

 tural ponds or canals 

 which figured so prom- 

 inently in the designs of 

 Le Notre were never 

 fully appreciated in this 

 country, though there 

 are a few examples re- 

 maining to attest their 

 beauty and propriety, 

 such as the well-known 

 one at Wrest, Bedford- 

 shire. That we have 

 not a greater number of 

 such beautiful sheets of 



water is surprising and partly arises no doubt from the teachings of the early-Victorian 

 school of Landscape Gardeners who maintained that, in no case, could a formal arrange- 

 ment be beautiful. The objections urged against architectural ponds by those who 

 affect to admire the miniature quasi-natural lakes or pools so often attempted in small 

 gardens with such purile results, are more imaginary than real. The water in the 

 former is as much a mirror as in the latter, while the architectural pond has the further 

 advantage of suitability to its environment and particularly to the architecture of the 

 house. The same art which regulates the outline of the basin or pond takes into 



FIG. 253. A RUSTIC BATHING POND. 



190 



