io8 Landscape Gardening 



A mere terrace, or series of terraces, may accompany a Gothic 

 house, and can be attended with a geometrical flower garden 

 or with other straight walks. But to produce a whole in 

 this manner, one of the three architectural styles I have 

 mentioned would form the best foundation work. Hence, 

 the practice of the geometrical style has often received the 

 title of Itahan gardening, it having been most extensively 

 adopted in Italy and in relation to the architectural forms 

 pecuHar to that country. Still, there may be cases in which 

 from the particular form of the ground, or the character of 

 the outlying district, or from other local circumstances, a 

 house in the EHzabethan or any kind of Gothic style may be 

 fitly accompanied with a purely regular garden possessing 

 all the features of the formal school. 



Commencing at the house, which should always be raised 

 three or four feet above the common ground level, this may 

 be supported by either a flat grass platform, with a grass 

 slope from it to the edge of a walk below, or, what is better, 

 the walk may be on the level of the house, and parallel with 

 it, and either a sloping grass bank, or a low ornamental wall, 

 break the change of level, this bank or wall affording the 

 means of obtaining one or more flights of steps. Whichever 

 of these plans is pursued, the grass at the edge of the walk, 

 whether on the top of the bank or at the bottom of the slope, 

 should be quite flat, to the width of at least a foot (more will 

 be better), and this rule must not be departed from in any 

 similar case. The upper edge of such grass banks ought to 

 be square, and by no means rounded off, while the bottom 

 of them may be very slightly softened, observdng to keep it 

 quite equally so for the entire length. Terraces should never 

 be so broad as materially to foreshorten the view of the lawn, 

 which is a common but decided error. 



If the front of a house has many breaks or projections, 



