20 THE NEW GARDENING 



ism. That is not to say that we are to do without the 

 Alpine garden, but only that we are to form a link be- 

 tween the two which shall obviate any suggestion of 

 incongruity. 



More particularly is this element of formalism called 

 for when a house is built on the slope of a hill, for here 

 terraces come into being as inevitably as they did in 

 the great and noble Italian gardens, where the pillars, 

 columns, parapets, and balustrades are a natural out- 

 growth from the dwelling, and complete a serene and 

 stately scheme. 



Formalism is not dead. At a period when the triumph 

 of " natural " gardening is loudly proclaimed we see the 

 Japanese garden, the clipped tree, and the rectangular 

 Rose garden with angular Yew hedges high on a wave 

 of favour. Humanity is a being of form. 



He who builds his house on the hill-side will do well to 

 consider whether he will act wisely by cramming close 

 under its walls irregular groups, curving borders a,nd 

 rockeries in a poor semblance of nature ; and whether he 

 will not produce a more harmonious and satisfying effect 

 by forming terraces, with cool rectangles of grass, hedges 

 of Yew, and supporting walls whose Rose-planted borders 

 are lined with Box. In parts more remote from the walls 

 of the house, beyond the main lawn, on the slopes, in the 

 valleys, by the water, will come the herbaceous borders, 

 the Alpine garden, and the groups of shrubs. 



The larger the house, and the better defined its archi- 

 tectural plan, the more convincing will be this appeal to 

 formalism. But we need not dwell on it at length, for 

 where one mansion, designed on some approved archi- 

 tectural model, is built, there come into existence thou- 

 sands of smaller dwellings, irregular in shape, picturesque, 

 architecturally formless, and yet full of charm. What 



