THE PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN-MAKING 



called a belt, I have never advised; nor have I ever willingly marked 

 a drive, or walk, completely round the verge of a park, except in 

 small villas, where a dry path round a person's own field is always 

 more interesting than any other walk." " Small plantations of trees, 

 surrounded by a fence, are the best expedients to form groups, 

 because trees planted singly seldom grow well. Neglect of thinning 

 and removing the fence has produced that ugly deformity called a 

 clump." " Water on an eminence or on the side of a hill is among 

 the most common errors of Mr. Brown's followers. In numerous 

 instances I have been allowed to remove such pieces of water from 

 the hills to the valleys, but in many my advice has not prevailed." 

 These remarks have an interest not only because they mark his 

 disapproval of the foolish practices which were in vogue when he 

 lived, but also because they point the absurdity of certain crude 

 methods of landscape gardening which are even now not wholly 

 extinct. There is one more of his precepts which deserves to be 

 quoted, on account of the warning it gives against shallow artifi- 

 ciality : " Deception may be allowable in imitating the works of 

 nature. Thus, artificial rivers, lakes, and rock scenery can only be 

 great by deception, and the mind acquiesces in the fraud after it is 

 detected, but in the works of art every trick ought to be avoided. 

 Sham churches, sham ruins, sham bridges, and everything which 

 appears what it is not, disgusts when the trick is discovered." This 

 is frankly a plea for honesty of design, a plea in which there is both 

 common sense and a good measure of artistic discretion. It is set 

 down with something of the same spirit that actuated William 

 Morris when he wrote, " Large or small, the garden should look 

 orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outer world. 

 It should by no means imitate the wilfulness or the wildness of 

 nature, but should look like a thing never seen except near the 

 house," though clearly Repton was prepared to go to far greater 

 lengths in the direction of deceptive imitation of nature than Morris 

 would have considered allowable. 



The landscape gardening of the present day is certainly managed 

 by the better class of designers with more taste and with more 

 understanding of its wide possibilities than was shown by most 

 of the eighteenth-century gardeners. We recognise that an artificial 

 piece of landscape can be made to look " orderly and rich," and 

 that even if it is not quite like " a thing never seen except near 

 the house," it can be carried out with something of the studious 

 exactness which the formal garden demands. Much care is taken 

 now to retain the characteristic features of the piece of ground 

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