16 FORMAL GARDENS 



You can even get that ivy effect in one year. There are nurseries 

 where one can buy ivies and forty other vines as long as those 

 in the picture. In every chapter in Part I, I shall show a different 

 and appropriate way of getting the effect of age in four years 

 or less. 



Since, then, the real difficulty is within ourselves, and not 

 in outside things, let us see if there is not a right and wrong spirit, 

 and a right and wrong method. Too often the aim of our formal 

 gardens is show, and that is why people dispense with a high 

 enclosure. ^ Our aim should be an intimate revelation of a beautiful 

 home life; but this demands privacy, and privacy is impossible 

 without walls or hedges. One has only to look at these English 

 pictures and think away the enclosures to see that this is so. More- 

 over, the enclosure must be formal; an irregular one will not do. 

 A formal garden surrounded by wild woods does not look well, 

 because the contrast is too abrupt. The mind demands some 

 transition between architecture and nature. The line must be 

 drawn where man's work ends. Every time we try to impose 

 formal ideas upon the landscape we are sure to fail. A ridiculous 

 example of this is shown in the lower picture on plate 7. How 

 absurd are those small columnar evergreens in this case Irish 

 yews. How trifling in comparison with the cedar of Lebanon! 

 How much better the picture would be without them! Yet we 

 are forever making artificial vistas and keeping them trim at 

 great expense. Compare now the picture on the top of plate 7. 

 Here we have all that wealth, age, and climate can give, but still 

 something is wrong. The trouble is that this formal garden has 

 no bounds. It goes beyond its proper place and tries to dominate 

 the whole landscape. That is like Canute commanding the sea 

 to roll back. One feels instinctively that to show man's mastery 



