THE BOOK OF GARDEN DESIGN 
CHAPTER I 
f OF GARDENS AND GARDEN DESIGNERS 
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From the earliest times the garden has been regarded 
as a fitting adjunct to the dwelling-places of man. The 
very name seems to suggest a place of beauty and 
repose, where the fairest of fruits and flowers are 
collected into a small compass for our special pleasure 
and edification. The term ‘ garden,” too, is often 
employed in a broader sense, meaning a tract of country, 
so lavishly endowed with natural beauties, as to almost 
suggest that it is the special property and care of some 
master hand, who cultivates his broad acres where we 
are content with inches. Eden, where, according to 
Milton’s famous description in ‘‘ Paradise Lost,” the 
‘cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,” mingled 
together in a tangle of sylvan loveliness, was a garden 
of Nature. We speak of Italy as the ‘‘ garden” of the 
world, and are accustomed to attribute the same term 
to some specially favoured district or locality in each 
county at home. From each of these all suggestion of 
design is absent; a mightier hand than ours has planted 
their groves, watered their fertile valleys, and strewn 
the meadows and hedgerows with flowers. To these 
favoured spots of earth, those at any rate which are left 
us, the garden designer must cast his eye, as he sets 
out to learn the rudiments of his craft. Not that garden 
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