Situation and Design 25 



no style of architecture demand a different setting. While the 

 stately, perfectly proportioned Georgian type requires a formal, bal- 

 anced treatment of trees and shrubbery masses immediately about 

 it, and implies the box-edged parterres filled with old-fashioned 

 flowers as a central feature of the garden design, the house of 

 nondescript architecture, which might well be called the Predomi- 

 nant, may be treated electively, and sometimes most informally. 

 Even the house that is "Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann 

 behind" may have some of its ugliness mercifully concealed. 

 It is a mistake to suppose that design can concern formality only. 

 Where the architecture is not pure, vines, shrubbery and trees, 

 judiciously placed, may perhaps conceal the defects, which is 

 one of the many things to be said in favour of the informal treat- 

 ment. Although such a house may have shrubs and flowers all 

 about it, it may possess no special spot that might properly be 

 called a flower garden at all. However, there are very few houses 

 indeed that are not improved by a formal touch about them some- ! 

 where. Most houses, of whatever style, are benefited through j 

 carrying the principles of architectural design out to their imme- \ 

 diate surroundings. Not every Elizabethan house was set on a 

 bowling green above a hedged and knotted garden, nor need it 

 be to-day; but surely no one with the artistic spirit would try to 

 unite it to the landscape by a Japanese garden. Yet a newly rich 

 lady, whose architect had achieved a Tudor triumph in stone and 

 half timber, surrounded it with a poor imitation of a Japanese 

 landscape in miniature within six weeks after the architect's back 

 was turned. 



"I can never forgive you," wrote the outraged designer. 



"What concern is it of yours ? Is n't your bill paid ?" replied 

 the complacent parvenu, who, that very day, was arranging for 



