40 The American Flower Garden 



Piazzas, pleasant as they are, have doubtless retarded the adoption 

 of the custom here; so has the tendency to do away with walls, tall 

 hedges, and screen planting, so exposing to the gaze of every 

 passer-by the intimate family life spent under the open sky. 



The Renaissance garden maker planned the hedged-in, vine- 

 clad, walled enclosures, sheltered from the winds and sun, for the 

 family's comfort and convenience, as carefully as he did the rooms 

 of the dwelling. Broad paths through pergolas, arbours or wooded 

 alleys led from one subdivision of the garden to another, and so, by 

 easy and almost imperceptible transition, the formal lines nearest 

 the house flowed more freely and more informally into the natural- 

 istic the farther one walked away from the house, until the stroll 

 brought one out face to face with nature herself. Here was 

 infinite variety in perfect unity. No "method" was despised by 

 the artist designer to gain the end desired. The terraces, the 

 stone work, the fountains, the sundial, the ilex walks, the parterres, 

 the bowling green, the open sunny spaces, the shaded retreats, 

 the rushing cascades down the hillsides, the mirror-like pools, the 

 groups of trees, the converging lines of a straight-hedged path, the 

 irresistible invitation of a disappearing curved one, the distant 

 vista alluring the eye to the beauty of a distant panorama all 

 had a deeper harmony underlying them than the uninitiated 

 observer could suspect. A glance at one of the old garden plans 

 astonishes one. The design drawn on paper shows a rigid for- 

 mality, perfect balance and intricacy of line comparable to Chinese 

 fretwork. The finished garden seems to be a naturally perfect 

 picture wherein the design is frequently lost to sight, and one is 

 conscious only of harmony on every hand. Another matter for 

 astonishment to the American is that the beauty of a Renaissance 

 garden may be entirely independent of flowers. These were 



