jo The American Flower Garden 



to let a day labourer compose what should be to them the most 

 important picture of all the home garden ? The rule may have 

 sufficiently rare exceptions to prove it, but I have never seen the 

 gardener who, if left to his own devices, would not cut up a lawn 

 into stereotyped flower beds of geometric exactness circles, 

 stars, triangles, squares and ellipses - - and fill them with 

 variegated coleus sheared to a level, or with cannas, or with 

 prim rows of deep pink and purple china asters, or with 

 screaming scarlet geraniums, or with very Dutch bulbs; the 

 tulips or hyacinths invariably arranged in zones of sharply 

 contrasting colours within the same bed. Such excrescences 

 on a fair green lawn can be likened only to pimples on the face 

 of Nature. 



Even the large-minded Thackeray admitted that he liked to 

 be observed by his friends when walking down Piccadilly button- 

 holing a duke. Similar gratification seems to elate the gardener 

 who has the proud privilege of serving a gentleman with an 

 imitation deer on his front lawn. The man's ideas of elegance 

 and his fellow gardeners' are completely fulfilled by the sight. 

 But, as "the Monarch of the Glen" gazes upon the geometric floral 

 horrors at his feet, no wonder his face wears a chronically startled 

 expression. How far away from nature have men, in their 

 ignorance, departed! And for how many crimes against art out- 

 of-doors are not the seedsmen's catalogues responsible! 



This chapter sings the charms of the naturalistic treatment of 

 a place where unintelligent formality, stereotyped monotony and 

 insincerity cease. It does not encourage the attempt to imitate 

 wild nature on our lawns and about our houses, which would be 

 absurd; but this is not to say, either, that this area may not be 

 treated in the naturalistic spirit or that the wild and rough parts 



