The Happy Garden 



horrible cumulative effect. Though gardener and 

 designer cease to work, Nature does not, and under 

 the constraint of designs half created, or plans that 

 have gone awry, she produces all sorts of mon- 

 strosities in her effort to force her way back to her 

 own rhythm and her own method of doing things. 



Rhythm is perhaps the best word to convey 

 what it is in Nature that the designer has to catch 

 and feel, and it is precisely because the relation is 

 so subtle and so fine and exacting that rules and 

 general statements are so perilous. A statement 

 is not religion : codes of positive rules are certain 

 to be misinterpreted and to lead to misconception 

 and blundering action : certain things — a very few 

 — are wrong in all cases and for all people and all 

 gardens. I am no counsellor, hardly at all a 

 theorist, and I have no more science than necessity 

 bids. The aim here is to express my garden in 

 words and to give only such general laws as can 

 be argued from my particular case. . . . 



The pleasure of a garden is to feel it growing 

 under your hand, and the greatest pleasure is to 

 be had when you feel that, given the soil, and your- 

 self, and your particular financial resources, and 

 the immediate surroundings, it must be so and not 

 otherwise : that is, when the garden grows with 

 your own growth. 



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