THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



You may go into any American town where 

 there is any inequality of ground and in half 

 an hour find a hundred or two private lawns 

 graded from the house to each boundary line 

 on a single falling curve, or, in plain English, 

 a hump. The best reason why this curve is not 

 artistic, not pleasing, but stupid, is that it is not 

 natural and gains nothing by being unnatural. 

 All gardening is a certain conquest of Nature, 

 and even when "formal" should interfere with 

 her own manner and custom as slightly as is 

 required by the necessities of the case the 

 needs of that particular spot's human use and 

 joy. The right profile and surface for a lawn of 

 falling grade, the surface which will permanently 

 best beguile both eye and foot, should follow a 

 double curve, an ogee line. For, more or less 

 emphasized, that is Nature's line in all her 

 affable moods on land or water: a descent or as- 

 cent beginning gradually, increasing rapidly, and 

 concluding gently. We see it in the face of any 

 smooth knoll or billow. I believe the artists 

 impute to Praxiteles a certain ownership in this 

 double curve. It is a living line; it suggests 



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