LANDSCAPE GARDENING 9 



nature. Therefore, landscape gardening is more restful and 

 refreshing, since it makes the greatest contrast to the artificialities 

 of city life. In the ripe judgment of many experienced travellers, 

 England is the most beautiful country in the world. On this 

 point I am not competent to express an opinion, but there can be 

 no question that the distinctive beauty of English country scenery 

 is due to the prevalence of landscape gardening. Formal gar- 

 dening originated in Italy and was brought to perfection on the 

 Continent. Landscape gardening was created in England and the 

 essence of it is illustrated by plate I. 



Third, the supreme quality in art is self-restraint. We overdo 

 everything. We want what we want when we want it. We 

 try to snatch the best of everything in life. We are willing to 

 back our taste against all the architects and landscape gardeners 

 that ever lived. We want a big show right off and our commonest 

 fault is that we scatter showy trees and shrubs all over our home 

 grounds, with the result that they are only museums. Every 

 tree and bush pictured on plate 4 is the kind our newly 

 rich buy in preference to native material. I mean the golden 

 evergreens, the purple-leaved plum and other variegated shrubs, 

 the weeping trees, cut-leaved bushes, and everything that has a 

 strange form or colour. But in this garden of Colonel Hoi- 

 ford 's, at Tetbury, these horticultural gems are not allowed to 

 ruin the landscape, but are put in a garden by themselves, and 

 they are combined in such a way as to make a picture. 



And so to make a long story short we should be perfect 

 beings in order to excel the British at this, their own game, or else 

 we should employ perfect landscape gardeners not mere archi- 

 tects, but men who love our native trees and shrubs and know how 

 to combine them into home pictures that are not merely for show 



