CHAPTER THREE 



The Flower Garden 



^^^■$.MN the seventeenth century, formal gardening was car- 

 @ T © ried to such an extreme that the possibilities of even 

 W^'©^^ bedding plants were exhausted. To most of us who 

 have seen names of cemeteries and towns, and every- 

 thing from a locomotive to the United States flag emblazoned in 

 tidy little coleus and begonia plants, it seems improbable that the 

 need of even stififer materials with which to execute patterns 

 should have been felt. This appears to have been the case, how- 

 ever, for colored sand and glass were substituted in beds for 

 flowers, and two centuries have not sufficed to live down the un- 

 pleasant atmosphere that attached itself to the word formal — 

 most people still experience a slight chill when a formal garden 

 is referred to — and visions of clipped trees, busts of Caesar and 

 Cicero, and gravel paths stretch awav toward their mental 

 horizons. 



Unfortunately, there is no word which expresses the "laid out" 

 quality of the word "formal" — its straight paths and regular 

 curves — and at the same time conveys an idea of charm. The 

 term "planned garden" is incorrect because a naturalistic garden 

 calls for just as much planning as does a formal garden, and 



[83] 



