LANDSCAPE LINES AND GARDENING 275 



Nature looks after our gardens to achieve the same ef- 

 fect, even when we are neglectful, tending always, for 

 instance, to throw out a debris-curve of shrubbery and 

 grasses from a group of trees. But in the gardens I 

 have visited (and the more elaborate they are the 

 greater the extent of this tampering) I find a wide- 

 spread tendency to iron out natural irregularities of 

 ground, to make a flat floor wherever possible, to ter- 

 race a beautifully sloping hillside and build a wall or a 

 rose arbour across a lovely curve. It seems to me that 

 the loveliest garden is the better if somewhere hi it 

 there is a rise or dip, untampered with, maintaining 

 its natural flow of line, to suggest the variety and con- 

 trast and stimulating irregularity of Nature. How 

 otherwise shall we escape monotony of mood? I may 

 be quite wrong in assuming that the best gardens, 

 like the best literature, ought to seem spontaneous and 

 natural, a bit of selected reality. But if I am right, 

 what some of our gardeners need are fewer drag scrap- 

 ers and more imagination. Wise is the man who 

 buildeth his garden upon a hill, or near it, for it may 

 be by some happy planning he can achieve a lovely 

 curve of lawn or spray-crest of rock and columbine to 

 cut the blue sky, or an inverted curve to slide into 

 a ferny hollow, and thus know the mystery and the 

 stimulation of the natural prospect, where peace and 

 aspiration, quietude and wonder, dwell side by side. 



