development of a new style. The earlier plans had been, in general, attempts at 

 direct copies of Italian examples. But the festivities and ceremonies of the court 

 of Louis XIV. required a magnificence and grandeur in the laying out of grounds 

 that had not been equaled in Italy, and breadth and magnificence became the lead- 

 ing characteristics of Le Notre's work. He tried, wherever possible, to tie his 

 garden to the surrounding landscape, and to give the impression that the forces of 

 nature had been marshaled and arrayed with ruler and compass rather than that 

 trees and flowers, sunshine and shade, were elements with which to design. His 

 work may be classed as half-way between the extremely formal and the landscape 

 garden. 



It was natural that wherever the fashions of the French Court went, there 

 Le Notre should be called to lay out gardens. Consequently the French style 

 spread to England, to Germany, and to the Netherlands, only to become every- 

 where modified or altered to suit local conditions. New motives of all kinds 

 were invented, and formality, pushed to the extreme limits of artificiality, became 

 the fashion. 



It was not many years before a reaction naturally set in. Addison and Pope 

 in their writings had already sounded the warning note, and the plea for a more 

 natural treatment was made. But as the advocates of the natural method in 

 England gathered force, a bitter discussion arose concerning the respective merits 

 of the two styles. Many of the really fine old formal gardens were destroyed, 

 and much was done in the name of naturalness that was highly artificial. But 

 the new school of " landscape gardeners " nourished, and has produced many of 

 the finest places in England ; while the discussion of the respective merits of the 

 two styles has continued to the present day. 



In this country, the earlier or Colonial gardens were, like the Colonial archi- 

 tecture, inspired by contemporaneous European examples, although the scale was 

 smaller, and the results, modified by the social requirements of the people, were 

 simpler. We know a good deal about the flowers grown, and some of the seeds- 

 men's catalogues of the early days of the nineteenth century show what a great 

 variety was cultivated. We cultivate the same ones to-day, only in more beautiful 

 and more numerous varieties. The charm of some of these old gardens which 

 our grandmothers loved to tend can be seen in the now overgrown gardens 

 of New England and the South, shown in the following pages. Perhaps the 

 most charming quality of such old gardens is their power to call up reminiscences 

 and pictures of other days. 



The landscape of America is, however, so especially well adapted to the 



