48 WATER GARDENS 



lesson we should learn from this is to use spectacular material with 

 the utmost restraint. 



But before we go into questions of design I want to say that 

 we have a great climatic advantage over England in materials for water 

 gardening. There are no flowers in the world that combine 

 purity and brilliancy of colour like water-lilies, and it is a perpetual 

 marvel how these colours can be so vivid and yet so soft. It is 

 true that the great improvements in water-lilies have been made 

 in Europe, but it is only in hot sunlight, like ours, that water- 

 lilies attain their most superb colour. Also we have a greater 

 variety of plants suitable for banks and margins. But what we 

 need to learn from England is to love our own material. The 

 English people love American plants more than we do. For 

 instance, consider the lake at Kew, as shown on plate 18. Every 

 one of these plants is American, or else we have an equivalent of it, 

 and the whole scene might be American. American plants are 

 the conspicuous features in three other pictures (those showing 

 marsh marigold, wild rice, and purple loosestrife). 



A beginner nearly always rejects native material, because he 

 sees no point in cultivating what grows wild all about him. Yet 

 the longer he lives the surer he is to give up most of the European 

 material, concentrate on American plants, and use the Japanese for 

 spice. The native material grows better, costs less to maintain, 

 and is more appropriate. To use the plants of a different climate 

 is to fight nature, and lose; to grow the plants of our own and allied 

 climates is to harness nature's forces. This Kew picture is better 

 than a comparable scene in America, because there is more lux- 

 uriance; and we can never get the utmost luxuriance unless we 

 make native plants dominant. Yet I must say that it would 

 hardly do to reproduce this Kew landscape in America. In the 



