viii INTRODUCTION 



in these days of rush and hurry the true Art may be 

 obscured by the mists of a false pretentiousness. 



Thus all who possess an acre or more of ground think 

 that they alone are fitted to plan out and arrange their 

 gardens, just as they do their drawing-rooms and the 

 interior of their houses. They do not bear in mind that 

 garden design as it is studied by the one nation which 

 really understands it — the Japanese — takes many years of 

 serious application to reach perfection. It is a very high 

 art ; as Maurice Hewlett aptly makes one of his characters 

 say : " Horticulture is next to music the most sensitive of 

 the fine arts. Properly allied to Architecture, garden- 

 making is as near as a man may get to the Divine 

 function." 



None of us would attempt to plan or build a large 

 and important house without the assistance of either an 

 architect or at least a competent builder, yet many attempt 

 garden-making without the help of either a landscape- 

 gardener or even a trained grower of plants. Surely 

 those celebrated and often quoted words of one of our 

 greatest English gardeners should be recalled more often, 

 " that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come 

 to'build stately, sooner than to garden finely ; as if garden- 

 ing were the greater perfection." Lord Bacon not only 

 knew well the individual charm and beauty of plants, with 

 their infinite variety of habit, colour, and scent, but also 

 he was able to take that just view which combines, in an 

 almost imperceptible gradation, a certain formality and 

 stateliness of line and proportion near the' house with an 

 informality resembling nature in the more distant parts 

 of the garden. Those who study the old French school 

 of garden design will find that, as in architecture, the 

 style of one date becomes the foundation for a further 

 development and improvement, which it may take a 

 hundred years or more to complete. Thus in Du Cerceau's 



