6 The American Flower Garden 



might be prohibitive, even if it were artistically possible. The 

 gardener has first to familiarise himself with nature's "excellences," 

 which she has scattered broadcast, and not less with the excellences 

 of his art; to find his inspiration in them and then select from his 

 storehouse of knowledge, eliminate, adapt, adjust, harmonise, and 

 recreate, not only to the scale of his design, but to the measure of 

 his own personal ideals, before he tries to produce either a large 

 park-like, panoramic landscape or a little garden. His task is 

 to create beautiful pictures, not to copy them. True art is never 

 an imitation of nature, notwithstanding a popular belief to the 

 contrary. Many landscape gardeners, headed by "Capability" 

 Brown, have failed as artists because they could not perceive this 

 fact. There is a vast difference between truth to nature and a 

 servile copying of her. 



The temptation to attempt too much is ever with the artist 

 partner. Nature herself is so prodigal that a rich imagination, 

 teeming with ideas, finds it difficult to reject her alluring example. 

 Only a cultivated sense of proportion can save one from the com- 

 mon error of sacrificing the simplicity, unity and strength of the 

 design as a whole to the embellishment of unrelated parts. Which 

 is to say that no garden, no matter how charming in detail, is 

 really good that is not good as a whole. 



Especially are amateurs prone to set out only their pet plants 

 without reference to the general effect, to select haphazard from 

 the enticing catalogues such plants as are most cleverly described 

 or illustrated, without reference to a well thought-out garden design. 

 One part of the home grounds, having no relation whatever to 

 another part, the main idea, on which more than half of the beauty 

 of a place depends, is gradually frittered away on trivialities. 

 Strange to say, a general working plan is the last thing most novices 



