NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 



be all the better appreciated because the reproductions show them as 

 they are, in the setting devised for them by the designer and among 

 surroundings which nature has perfected and made appropriate — 

 because they have their right positions in a completed picture, and 

 are not detached from the accessory details with which they are 

 necessarily required to be in proper relation. The garden seat, the 

 sundial, the fountain, or the group of statuary must be judiciously 

 placed or it may become an annoying incongruity even when it is in 

 itself a beautiful object ; and the test of the judgment used in placing 

 it is the manner in which it lends itself to treatment as the central 

 fact of a reasoned composition. 



The garden designer, it should be remembered, must work with an 

 eye to the future, and in his plan he must take account of what is to 

 be in years to come. The design which looks well on paper may 

 easily prove impossible to realise, and is quite likely to be thrown 

 out of all proportion by processes of nature, the consequences of 

 which have not been foreseen. But when these processes have been 

 deliberately prepared for and the inevitable effect of the growth and 

 thickening of vegetation has been allowed for in the carrying out of 

 the plan, the lapse of years only helps to develop an intention which 

 was from the first sound and discreet. The illustrations given show, 

 in the majority of instances, the evolution of a design made many 

 years ago, and so they are to be taken as records of what can be 

 accomplished by controlling nature intelligently, and by inducing 

 her to do her work along the lines laid down by men with shrewd 

 foresight and ingenious minds. These men made her help them, as 

 they understood that without her assistance much of their labour 

 would be unprofitable, and what came of this alliance we can well 

 judge to-day, because the results are available for our inspection. 

 The almost endless possibilities of garden-making when it is carried 

 on in accordance with the dictates of common sense and without 

 slavish adherence to fashion, are clearly indicated in the series of 

 illustrations. Many effective comparisons can be made between 

 the various places represented, comparisons that are as instructive 

 as they are interesting, and that prove how little a preference for a 

 particular style makes necessary any adherence to stereotyped 

 methods of design or any repetition of a stock formula. In both 

 formal and landscape gardening there is obviously the fullest scope 

 for invention, and the only restriction that need be observed is the 

 salutary one which forbids to the designer any lapse into those 

 extravagances of manner which are to be condemned as foolish 

 travesties of nature. 

 xxxii 



