THE NEW ART OF GARDEN-MAKING 21 



style of gardening can be invoked for these hybrid places ? 

 They are built in deliberate defiance of all rules except 

 those of hygiene. It cannot be said that no style of 

 architecture is represented in them, because all the styles 

 jumble and jostle each other in one bewildering, captivat- 

 ing, delightful whole. 



Have modern landscape gardeners studied the problem 

 of bringing gardens into agreement with these gabled, 

 timbered medleys ? Can they evolve a settled style ? 

 Are they able to promise us something that is free from 

 all trace of what is called formalism ? These are questions 

 of great interest, for garden cities are growing up on every 

 hand, and in these places the houses are irregularly 

 grouped and vary greatly in character. 



I do not expect to see any settled national style come 

 into existence, either in America or England. I expect 

 to see garden-lovers guided by a school of garden artists 

 (so to term them) who are as little influenced in their 

 creations by the tenets of the classical landscape gardeners 

 of the past as the designers of jumble houses are by the 

 rules of the great architects. I expect to see gardens 

 come into being that are a mingled mass of styles, and yet 

 are collectively harmonious and beautiful. 



This process will be helped by a better knowledge of 

 good plants and a fuller understanding of the principles 

 of thorough culture. It is often a matter of wonder to 

 educated people that working gardeners, springing as they 

 do from the lower classes, and full of scorn, as they often 

 are, for the guidance of horticultural theorists, should yet 

 produce so many satisfying examples of flower-gardening. 

 The explanation is that these men, whatever their defects 

 may be, are true plantsmen. They know and love plants. 

 They live for plants. They have the keenest possible 

 sense of the difference between a good plant and a bad 



