CHAPTER X 



THE LITTLE FORMAL GARDEN 



So fashion it that imagination, running riot, may invest its 

 stone-paved paths and grass-grown alleys with the witchery of 

 dreams. 



I THINK every garden should possess its little formal 

 pleasaunce, for it is so easy to invest it with the atmo- 

 sphere of romance, to give it at once an old-world charm. 

 " Natural gardens " are the vogue nowadays, and by this 

 term is implied the planting of wide borders filled with 

 luxuriant plants, grouped in big masses, so that a brilliant 

 effect may be obtained. But however successful they 

 may prove as a flower show, or how perfect a feature of 

 the landscape, they are lacking in intimate appeal. 

 Unless there is some pronounced formality about a garden 

 it is not easy to endow it with a sense of repose and 

 restfulness, to make of it a thing apart from the world 

 outside and, so to fashion it, that imagination, running 

 riot, may invest its stone-paved paths and grass-grown 

 alleys with the witchery of dreams. And how little help 

 it needs a sundial, an old stone seat, a screen all creeper- 

 covered, a gateway twined with flower and leaf, an 

 arbour thronged with vine. Such as these, if rightly and 



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