Gardens for Small Country Houses. 



141 



CHAPTER XIV.— WATER IN THE FORMAL GARDEN. 



The Soul of Gardens " — Reflections — Pools and their Water-levels — Varied Shapes- 

 Lily Ponds and their Depth — Separate Pool Gardens — Water Parterres — Fountains 

 and their Sculpture — Leadwork — Well-heads — Pumps. 



F 



FOUNTAINS and waters are the soul of gardens ; they make their chief 

 ornament and enhven and revive them. How often it is that a garden, 

 beautiful though it be, will seem sad and dreary and lacking in one of its most 

 gracious features, if it has no water." So wrote Pierre Husson in La Theorie et la 

 Pratique du Jardinage in 1711, and set down a truth that is coming into its own again. 

 This chapter is called " Water in the Formal Garden " because it is concerned with 

 water as a factor in design, rather than as the element which makes possible all 

 the enchanting growths proper to the water garden in its technical meaning. Husson, 

 who published his book in Holland, had all the French devotion to rather theatrical 

 uses of water. He extols " eaux jaillissantes, celles qui s'elevent en I'air au milieu 

 des bassins, torment des jets, des gerbes, des bouillons d'eaux." Appropriate as such 

 features are in great gardens, water needs to be employed very simply in small ones. 

 Little pools and rills and fountains, with their waters not too vigorously " jaillissantes," 

 need to be disposed with a sparing hand. 



Although the gardens at Plurtwood, Surrey, are of large extent when taken 

 together, the great variation in levels necessitated their division into several gardens, 

 some quite small, which are complete in themselves, and therefore useful to illustrate 

 our argument. Even in the great fan garden, the features at the radial point from 



FIG. 163. — FAN-SHAPED LILY POOL AT HURTWOOD. 



