THE LITTLE FORMAL GARDEN 



with care disposed, may be the means of transforming the 

 most prosaic plot into a garden haunting and full of the 

 music of flowers. 



One's ideas of a formal garden should not, as perhaps 

 unconsciously they do, bring to mind a parterre gay with 

 myriads of bedding plants, crossed and re-crossed with 

 stiff, straight box-edged paths, and, to our vexation, 

 recalling, until we know them well by heart, Pope's satiric 

 lines : 



" No pleasing intricacies intervene, 

 No artful wildness to perplex the scene ; 

 Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, 

 And half the platform just reflects the other." 



Because this was once all that formal gardening con- 

 noted, shall we still cherish the fallacy that this is all 

 it can mean to us to-day now that we are able to people 

 it with fresh, free-growing flowers in such wonderful 

 variety ? Rather let us materialise visions of flagged 

 paths, winding here and wending there, their margins 

 of stone and little cascades of tumbling blossom, the 

 crevices between the stones filled with tiny plants, 

 fragrant of leaf and sweet of bloom. And to mark the 

 passing hours, a sundial centred on neat grass plot, re- 

 minding us that " 'tis always morning somewhere in the 

 world." 



We must girdle the garden with roses, span the paths 

 with arches of Clematis, and in one corner place an 

 arbour and smother it with Traveller's Joy. This is the 



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