44 Hints on Landscape Gardening 



the best enclosure for a "pleasure-garden," and 

 regular lines that are not concealed, but quite 

 visibly mark the difference, are here to be recom- 

 mended ; for a garden is the occasion for very 

 obvious art, and must therefore appear as such. 

 While this barrier keeps out of the gardens the 

 cattle or the deer grazing in the park, or visibly 

 divides from them the meadows intended only 

 for hay, the eye dwells with pleasure, first, upon 

 the rich colors of the foreground, with its wealth 

 of flowers and the emerald carpets of carefully 

 kept lawns, and beyond, upon the open land- 

 scape with its imposing trees or the waving 

 grasses sown with wild flowers, where the mow- 

 ers swing their glittering scythes in the sun or 

 repose at noon in the fragrant hay. This contrast 

 between free Nature and artistic cultivation, vis- 

 ibly separated and yet melting into one harmo- 

 nious picture, is doubly soothing to the feelings. 

 It depends on the locality whether all the dif- 

 ferent gardens (and the more there are the more 

 pleasing effect of variety they produce) shall be 

 enclosed in one large space, most fittingly near 

 the dwelling-house, or whether they shall be 

 scattered about the park. I have pursued a mid- 

 dle course, extending the "pleasure-ground" all 

 around the castle, and not, as is generally done in 

 England, only on one side ; the flower gardens ap- 

 proach close to the windows, a conservatory open-, 

 ing from the salon forming a connecting link ; 

 then at a little distance, as a plot by itself, but 

 still within the circumference of the " pleasure- 



