NEWS OF SPRING 



garden" which is thus abused is a great mistake on the part of 

 our horticulturists. It is natural, it comes into being spon- 

 taneously, so to speak, when we can dispose of extensive spaces 

 that mingle, in a country of hills and groves and rivers, with 

 the surrounding landscape. It is then just that landscape it- 

 self, discreetly arranged and corrected "for the pleasure of the 

 eyes." But it infallibly comes to look false and more or less 

 absurd so soon as it aims at accumulating, in some poor en- 

 closure, beauties which exist only by favour of the most serene 

 lines of the horizon and which are nothing more than space 

 harmoniously displayed. Let us not forget, besides, that the 

 "English garden," which is natural or "sub-spontaneous," as 

 the botanists say, in England, is rather, as we understand it, 

 of Chinese origin and that there is no art nor taste more im- 

 penetrable and more hostile to our own than that of China. 



3 



The garden of the white races, at least the European gar- 

 den, was always wiser and more logical. Go back as far as 

 we may, we see it striving to adapt itself to the architectural 

 schemes that surround it. It continues them, interprets and 

 completes them. We are able, for instance, thanks to the 



[ 4 ] 



