ENGLISH IDEALS OF GARDENING 207 



That is almost lost, although there are now some 

 signs of its revival; but it still persists in our gar- 

 dens and through them it may some day return into 

 our architecture; for the persistence of the cottage 

 garden proves that the spirit which produced the 

 beautiful cottage of the past is still alive, even though 

 the cottage garden may grow up about a white-brick 

 and blue-slated villa. 



The love of growing plants is the cause both of 

 the virtues and the faults of English gardening. One 

 instance of the faults may be noticed in the desolate 

 gardens of our London squares. These must be fail- 

 ures, as they are attempts to do what is impossible. 

 But in our larger country gardens are often to be 

 found errors of the same kind, though not so fatal. 

 The rich man, who admires a cottage garden and who 

 tries to imitate its beauty in his own grounds, is apt 

 to forget that a great part of that beauty depends 

 upon the fact that the cottage garden is planned to 

 suit its own small scale, that the art of cottage gar- 

 dening has grown up through centuries and has adapted 

 itself perfectly to its own conditions. The conditions 

 of the large garden are different and require a diflferent 

 and more diflScult kind of design; while its traditions 

 have been broken by several violent changes of taste, 

 such as the landscape mania of the eighteenth century 

 and the bedding-out mania of the nineteenth. It is 

 certainly possible for our larger gardens to have some of 

 the beauty of the cottage garden; but they must attain 

 to that beauty in their own way, and, in aiming at 



