PREFACE 
as long ago as 1911 and 1912—were originally intended solely for an exhi- 
bition of garden pictures. The exhibition was inevitably deferred, when it 
was decided that they should first appear in book form, because the drawings 
had to be held over for reproduction in colour. oo, 
In its first inception, the raison d’étre of the book was purely a pictorial 
one, and the text accompanying the pictures would therefore have been 
merely elucidatory and descriptive. The text, in short, was to have illus- 
trated the drawings, not, as now, vice versa. 
But alas! in six months there followed the cosmic upheaval of the last 
four years—with the inevitable postponement or destruction of all human 
plans and projects. In August, 1914, when I was in the full swing and 
enjoyment of my outdoor work—like a bolt from the blue—the measureless 
calamity of the Great War was uponus! At the moment when all eyes were 
turned to the stricken fields of France and Flanders, when, there, and else- 
where in the wide area of strife, husbands, sons, brothers and nephews— 
heroes all, in their readiness and steadfastness, martyrs in their faith—were, 
voluntarily, paying so heavy a price for the ultimate freedom of mankind 
—none at home would have had heart or time to consider the beauty and the 
peace of gardens—and therefore the book itself was—more than once—post- 
poned. 
But my own small bit of work went on. The drawings themselves were 
ready in 1915—and in working at the text I came unexpectedly upon a 
mine so rich that, since the unhappy prolongation of the war allowed it— 
I seized the chance to treat my subject—or rather subjects—for thirteen 
different ones are dealt with—much more fully. To treat it exhaustively, 
even without reference to many interesting or beautiful metropolitan gardens 
existing, which I have not so much as mentioned—would be impossible within 
the limits of one volume. 
And the book, even so far as it goes, is incomplete. I had purposed, as a 
matter of course, to include a drawing of ‘‘ Strawberry ”’—the famous 
garden of Horace Walpole, and to make more than a passing allusion to his 
place in the history of gardening ; but much to my regret I was not permitted 
to do so. And though facilities were kindly given me to draw in the gardens 
of Gray’s Inn, laid out, it is said, by Bacon himself, I found that they had 
been so sorely cut up and worn by the perpetual drilling of thousands of 
troops, that on zsthetic grounds I was compelled to leave them out. 
JESSIE MaccREcor. 
Swallowfield, 
October 15th, 1918. 
