24 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



them. The Japanese garden is a mere toy that might be the 

 appanage of a doll's house. Everything is in miniature. There 

 is a dwarf forest of stunted Pines, with a Liliputian waterfall run- 

 ning into a tiny pond full of giant gold fish — the only big things to 

 be seen. There is a semblance in earth and stones of the great 

 Mount Fuji, and in one corner is a temple to Inari Sama, the god 

 who presides over farming and is waited upon by the foxes. Stone 

 lanterns jof grotesque shape spring up here and there, and the 

 paths are made of great flat stepping-stones set well apart so as not 

 to touch one another; shrubs, Cycads, and dwarf Conifers are 

 planted, not without quaint skill and prettiness, but there are no 

 broad effects, no inspiration of Nature. It is all spick and span, 

 intensely artificial, a miracle of misplaced zeal and wasted labor. 

 Attached to what were the Daimios' palaces in the old days there 

 were some fine pleasure grounds, well laid out, rich in trees, and 

 daintily kept. The gardens of the Mikado, by the shore of the bay 

 of Yedo, are beautiful. But the average Japanese garden is such 

 as I have described it, a mere whimsical toy, the relic of an art 

 imported from China, and stereotyped on the willow pattern plate." 

 So writes Lord Redesdale in his Bamboo Garden, and a more faith- 

 ful picture could not be portrayed. Long familiar with these 

 gardens in China I confess that I did not find them out of place 

 in Japan. I have from experience become accustomed to re- 

 gard them as belonging to the natural order of things appertaining 

 to the Far East. But in the West, and in New England especially, 

 they have no place. Let us cultivate in our gardens here all the 

 beautiful plants that are hardy in this climate; let us inculcate that 

 profound love of Nature so dominant in Japan ; let us in our gardens 

 take full advantage of natural beauty; let us import no exotic 

 style of gardening, but strive to develop American gardens in har- 

 mony with x\merican scenery and climate. 



