X preface 



It has been, moreover, my object to show that the 

 evolution of growing things, the development of dis- 

 tinct types of effect, although greatly varied, can be, and 

 should be, made to bear the stamp alike of definite 

 though perhaps instinctive ideas throughout the vari- 

 ous kinds of landscape gardening, whether it be a park, 

 an estate, a village garden, or a window box. It should 

 make a fine picture no matter how small or how large. 



The growth or evolution of landscape gardening has 

 been more than a mere series of individual experiences, 

 for "experience is extended and enriched by, we have to 

 remember, not merely and primarily knowledge. We 

 begin by trying and end by knowing. Practice is the 

 parent of theory and realization the surest verification. " 

 Moreover, "evolution, strictly taken, presupposes a 

 fundamental unity in which all that is eventually evolved 

 or disclosed was involved or contained from the first. 

 The whole is more than the sum of the parts, that is the 

 character of evolution. A unity that is not more than 

 its constituent elements is no real unity at all. Experi- 

 ence furnishes instances of this at every turn. The 

 timbre of a musical note is more than the sum of its 

 constituent tones: a melody, more than the sum of its 

 separate notes"; again: "if the whole be a tree, it may 

 be true that one fails to see the trunk because of the 

 branches, and yet it is from the trunk that all these 

 spring."' 



It is for this reason that the past of landscape garden- 

 ing is so fruitful of valuable suggestions for the present. 



' Realm of Ends, Prof. James Ward, pp. loo, loi , 104. 



