THE AMATEUR GARDEN 



make friends. Was it not Ruskin himself who 

 wanted to butt the railway-train off the track 

 and paw up the rails something like that ? 

 But even between them and the landscape 

 there is now an entente cordiale. I have seen 

 the hand of Joseph Pennell make beautiful 

 peace with billboards and telegraph-poles and 

 wires. 



The railway points us to the fact that along 

 the ground Nature is as innocent of parallel lines, 

 however bent, as of straight ones, and that in 

 landscape-gardening parallels should be avoided 

 unless they are lines of utility. "Don't" lay 

 parallel lines, either straight or curved, where 

 Nature would not and utility need not. Yet 

 my own acre has taught me a modification of 

 this rule so marked as to be almost an excep- 

 tion. On each side of me next my nearest 

 neighbor I have a turfed alley between a contin- 

 uous bed of flowering shrubs and plants next the 

 division line, and a similar bed whose meander- 

 ings border my lawn. At first I gave these two 

 alleys a sinuous course in correspondence with 

 the windings of the bed bordering the lawn - 



34 



