140 STUDIES IN GARDENING 



lustration apt. Both naturalists and formalists are 

 apt to be pedantic in the application of their prin- 

 ciples. The naturalist forgets that in ninety-nine 

 gardens out of a hundred nature cannot be plausibly 

 imitated, even if such imitation were the right aim of 

 gardening. The formalist forgets that the material 

 of a garden is for the most part living material and 

 that there is no necessary incongruity between it and 

 the hving things of nature. A great part of the beauty 

 of good formal gardening comes from the contrast 

 between the limited and unchanging forms of things 

 that are made by man and the variety and unceasing 

 changes of plant life. The most familiar example 

 of such a contrast is to be found in ivy or a^y other 

 creeper growing up a house or a church or a bridge. 

 But the beauty is lost or much diminished when the 

 contrast disappears with any overgrowth of the plant. 

 If a building is beautiful in itself, it should not be 

 smothered in creepers; and, even if it is not beautiful, 

 it has an air of desolation and neglect when so smoth- 

 ered. There is, of course, a modern fancy for desola- 

 tion and neglect, which is, no doubt, a reaction against 

 extreme artificiality of life and the result of a disgust 

 for the ugliness of most modern things made by man. 

 It is, in fact, a kind of Byronism of taste; and, as 

 Byronism was the result of unhealthy living, so this 

 is the result of unhealthy art. In great ages of art 

 men have never wished to make their gardens look 

 like wildernesses or their houses like overgrown ruins. 

 They have been pleased with their own handiwork. 



