1 62 Landscape Gardening 



become essential. In adverting to it, however, I am tempted 

 to make a short incursion into the territory of a neighboring 

 profession — architecture — with which indeed it is so closely 

 connected, that it would be impossible to treat of the one 

 without trespassing on the other. 



Gardening and architecture, like all the fine arts, have 

 much in common. And that department of architecture 

 which belongs more exclusively to the garden has especially 

 a great affinity with gardening in its broader principles. In 

 fact there is much more relation between the two than is 

 usually admitted or the ordinary products of practitioners 

 in either art would at all justify us in behaving. 



Architectural decoration is not, as many would assert, 

 unfitted for English or American gardens, because stone gets 

 speedily weather-stained and sobered down in color, and the 

 fine evergreens and beautiful grass of these countries will, 

 in association with architectural objects, impart sufficient 

 warmth of tone. 



Modern tendencies in gardening have been too much away 

 from its character as an art, and the more it is restored to its 

 legitimate position the more nearly will it be brought into 

 kindred with architecture. On the other hand the too com- 

 monly cumbrous, regular, and unyielding nature of architec- 

 tural objects, when used for garden decoration, has tended 

 still further to detach two pursuits which are essentially and 

 obviously allied. For as a house and a garden are naturally 

 and intimately associated, and it is a law of the universe that 

 the boundaries of each domain in the natural kingdom should 

 insensibly mingle and be lost in each other, so it is plain that 

 an un vitiated taste would be most gratified when the province 

 of architecture is extended so as to embrace lightly and har- 

 moniously such parts of the garden as may be most con- 

 tiguous to the house; while the garden also in these parts 



