THE NEW CITY GARDEN 215 



ethical influence as the present system, while the indi- 

 vidual lessons would be of immeasurably higher educa- 

 tional value. 



With such an influence at work there would be more 

 harmony between the private and public horticultural 

 work of Garden Cities than there is now. The Garden 

 City would become what it ought to be but certainly 

 is not now a city of gardens. Every area on which 

 the streets of a garden city converge should be a 

 garden. The fronts of the houses in each street should 

 form a collective garden leading to the central garden 

 on which the street debouched. Given boldness in 

 planning, and a sufficiency of civic pride on the 

 part of occupiers to support a general scheme, avenues 

 of gardens could be formed in every part of the city, 

 each with its own individuality, and yet forming part of 

 a whole. At present the Garden City is a Garden Hotch- 

 potch, crude, inharmonious and ineffective. 



The " landscape " work of the larger public parks has 

 been denounced by many eminent writers, but in days 

 when a park is also a playground when fields have to 

 be found for cricketers and footballers, greens for bowlers, 

 courts for tennis-players and sand-pits for the children 

 allowances must be made. Theoretically there is much 

 to be said for the suggestion that all public parks should 

 be laid out on a clear and simple plan, such as that of a 

 series of wide, regular avenues converging on one central 

 object, a lake for example ; because some of the avenues 

 could be planted with appropriate trees to provide shade, 

 others lined with gardens, and the spaces which they 

 enclosed planted with groups of shrubs and trees. A 

 plain, coherent plan certainly has manifest advantages 

 in a public park frequented by thousands of people ; it 

 has ease and dignity. But it panders to the purposeless 



