ARRANGEMENT AND FORMATION. 



THE facts and considerations in this chapter are given in relation 

 to the general plan of a garden. The several matters spoken 

 of, as Planting, etc., are treated in detail elsewhere in the book. 



For arranging the plan of a garden, few rules can be laid down, 

 but artistic principles must be insisted on. So many considerations 

 press in to vary design, that arbitrary dealing by imposition of what 

 may be termed paper designs, however ingenious, is, in its degree, 

 ill-advised. The detailed plan should spring from the site, as an 

 adaptation of its natural or created natural features, and should not 

 be, as it were, forced upon the position, crushing it to an artificial 

 scheme. To copy simply the design of another place is inadmissible. 

 Considerations that rule in this connection are almost infinite : extent, 

 geological formation, soil, existing natural formation or features, 

 climate and aspect, the display of distant beauty, conformity to out- 

 side influences, particularly to the requirements of the possessor, 

 and the expenditure of money that may be made. It is this important 

 variety of modifying influences, and how they are dealt with, that 

 gives charm to each new work of landscape gardening, and to the 

 developments it presents; just as we contemplate a fresh work of 

 the kind in pictorial art, and note how the artist has treated the 

 natural features, the colours and tints, and their modifying juxta- 

 position on the canvas. The painter, however, may indeed have 



