200 



GARDEN CRAFT IN EUROPE 



LIME TREE ARDOUR : KLEEF 



arbours often hardly large enough 

 for two persons. Silver balls reflect 

 and magnify the tiny flower beds and 

 gaily painted statues' of lead and 

 wood. Houses and gardens are sur- 

 rounded by trees cut into fantastic 

 forms, and occasionally the artistic 

 owner goes so far as to paint their 

 trunks in shades of blue and white. 

 At Zaandyck the angles of a small 

 parterre have leaden figures of Night, 

 Morning, Midday and Evening with 

 Bacchus in the middle. 

 At Zaandam some of these Lilliputian gardens may still be found, and 

 for an extreme instance we cannot do better than quote De Amicis's descrip- 

 tion of the gardens at Broek : " The gardens are not less odd than the houses. 

 They seem made for dwarfs. The paths are scarcely wide enough for the feet, 

 the arbours can contain two very small persons standing close together, the 

 box borders would not reach the knee of a child of four years old. Between 

 the arbours and the tiny flower beds there are little canals, apparently made 

 for toy boats, which are spanned here and there by superfluous bridges with 

 little painted rail- 

 ings and columns ; 

 basins about as 

 large as an ordin- 

 ary sitz-bath con- 

 tain a Lilliputian 

 boat tied by a red 

 cord to a sky-blue 

 post ; tiny steps, 

 paths, gates and 

 lattices abound, 

 each of which can 

 be measured with 

 the hand, or 

 knocked down a town garden in the eighteenth 'century. 



