natural style of treatment, that for many years the formal garden was forgotten, 

 though many beautiful country places and parks were laid out. In consequence 

 there are in America many superb old places that, having had the benefit of good 

 designing to begin with, have to-day a finished appearance, owing to fine trees 

 and perfected details. 



In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the formal garden in 

 this country. Foreign travel may in part account for this, but still more impor- 

 tant factors are the interest that has sprung up in all that relates to outdoor life, 

 and the increased desire to improve the outdoor part of the house. As a conse- 

 quence formal gardens have been created side by side with the natural, and the 

 discussion of the relative merits of the two styles has been revived on this side 

 of the Atlantic. 



It is a mistake to go so far as to say that but one type of garden, either the 

 formal or the natural, can be correct, satisfactory, or beautiful. The arguments of 

 the advocates of either kind for their own favorite style, and their contempt for the 

 claims of their opponents, seem often like an attempt to bring the principles of 

 art under the rulings of a well defined code. The contention of the formalist, 

 that man cannot imitate nature and therefore should not inspire himself from 

 nature, but should have all his gardens balanced, formal, and symmetrical, is as 

 unjust as is the dictum of the landscape gardener that nature abhors a straight line, 

 and that, therefore, straight lines should be avoided or broken. We are given cer- 

 tain elements with which to deal, certain materials to handle, and there should 

 be no law to ordain that either every line must be straight and formal or else that 

 every form should be broken or at least unsymmetrical. It is wholly a question 

 of appropriateness and of personal and individual art. Which is the more beauti- 

 ful, a Greek temple standing out white and calm against the deep blue of the 

 Mediterranean sky, or a lofty French cathedral with its rich detail and wonderful 

 fabric of flying buttresses silhouetted against the cooler and grayer skies of the 

 North of France? Each represents a style perfect in itself, yet totally different. 

 There is no need of condemning one in favor of the other; each is appropriate in 

 its place. It is the appropriate adaptation of the established European principles 

 of gardening to American surroundings that will perfect an American style. 



One of these principles, as we saw in the case of the gardens of the Renais- 

 sance, was to continue the lines of the house out into the grounds, and thus to 

 make the garden, as it were, an outdoor room, bounded by hedge and wall in such 

 a way as to make its proportions pleasing, and decorated not only with trees, 

 shrubs, and flowers, but with fountains, statues, and vases, which offer a pleasing 



