THE NEW ART OF GARDEN-MAKING 19 



actual walls of the building to a few acres of the immediate 

 surroundings formalism rules. Can we say that it governs 

 unwisely ? Not, surely, if it leads the mind by gentle and 

 pleasing gradations from the walls to the woods. The 

 human mind adjusts itself to perspective by a process of 

 transition, not by violent leaps. There seems to have 

 grown up a pretension that unless a human being subjects 

 himself, immediately on leaving the door of his house, to 

 the brilliance of an herbaceous border or the clangour of a 

 group of Rhododendrons, he is to be put in the stocks with 

 a card bearing the shameful word " formalist " pinned 

 to his breast. 



In that " normal state of completeness and order in the 

 relations of things to each other " which constitutes har- 

 mony, house and garden cannot be entirely divorced from 

 each other. They must partake of each other's characters. 

 An irregular cottage covered with flowers needs nothing 

 but flower borders around it. But a mansion wants more, 

 and the old Greek and Roman gardeners planned more 

 wisely than is generally admitted nowadays, when they 

 credited human nature with an inborn sense of relation- 

 ship between their homes and the immediate surround- 

 ings. Recognizing this, we see that it is in no sense 

 unnatural to arrange that the outline of a house shall 

 regulate, to some extent, the outline of the ground 

 near it. 



That which is based on a traditional demand for har- 

 mony is based on the bedrock of true art, and cannot be 

 affected by groundless charges of artificiality. There 

 are places where a measure of formalism is imperatively 

 demanded. Without it the house comes into violent colli- 

 sion with an alien environment. There is nothing in 

 common between an Alpine garden and a great dwelling. 

 To bring the two into sharp contact is to create antagon- 



