230 3Lan&0cape Hrcbitecture 



jects from which enough can be readily learned to 

 enable any one to intelligently employ, if necessary, 

 experts of sufficient knowledge and skill to do good 

 work in the various departments of maintenance. In 

 time, knowledge will doubtless come in this way to the 

 owner of the place, and he will find the occupation of 

 supervising such work a pleasure and even a delight. 

 There will be failures and many accidents, but a fair 

 degree of success will make the memory of the misfor- 

 tunes soon grow dim in the joy of horticultural achieve- 

 ment. 



The chief reason that this supreme excellence of 

 maintenance is seldom attained is that few people 

 acquire enough knowledge to know fine maintenance 

 when they see it. Even if they have given long and 

 what they consider diligent attention to their place, 

 grown wonderful roses, or hothouse grapes, by means 

 of a clever gardener, when they go about the world 

 their kind of training hardly enables them to realize the 

 quality of good maintenance. It would be weU if 

 more people prided themselves on the well-being of their 

 whole estate, rather than some single feature of it, a 

 rose garden, a greenhouse, a scheme of carpet beds or of 

 foliage plants. By a well maintained place it should 

 not be understood, however, that the standard of high 

 excellence necessarily implies a swept and garnished and 

 polished place such as one sees occasionally in Paris 

 and elsewhere. Cleanliness and neatness are all very 

 well, but they are overdone when the trees and shrubs 

 are trimmed and trained imtil they hardly look like 



