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THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



March, 19 10 



through the undeviatingly straight approach 

 to the Castle was any but a hot and dusty 

 way in the summer and a veritable bog of 

 mud in the winter; that the out-riders were 

 other than dusty, sweltering attendants on 

 the shadeless highway in July, and worse 

 in winter, as they labored along the newly 

 planted, muddy roads to the destination of 

 their liege 4ord? If you deceive yourself 

 with the idea that English estates were never 

 crude and awkward, that they never began, 

 that they have always existed in their present 

 glory, you need only look at these old plates. 



In a certain sense, we of America are 

 facing the same problem that our English 

 forebears did in the seventeenth century. 

 We are awakening to a realization, as they 

 did, that trees do not always happen where 

 they should, and that if we wish them to 

 happen at all our hands and souls must be 

 taught what tree-hunger is. 



Not only Chatsworth House and Knole, 



but dozens of others shown in these plates 

 in a formative state, are surrounded by 

 innumerable exclamation points of young 

 plantings, in fact there is hardly a picture in 

 this book of early landscape work on English 

 estates that shows a tree of any size, except 

 occasionally on the neighboring hills. Go 

 to these estates to-day, and see what has 

 become of the baby trees. These men were 

 practical men, but at the same time they 

 were dreamers above all else. 



No one can look at these pictures and not 

 feel the thrill of delight which must have 

 filled the mind of the illustrious designer. 

 He not only created superb gardens and 

 parks, but he revelled in the thought of his 

 designs growing, day by day, into the fashion 

 he originated. It all grew very slowly, but 

 it grew, and he saw it grow, and he knew it 

 would go on growing, and that was his happi- 

 ness, his greatest recompense. 



Now this is just where the gate is opening 



He knew he could not live to see his treasure reach an age of dignity, but he planted the yew just the same 



for you and me. If there was a time when 

 the garden lovers whose work has since 

 become a very part of the enduring earth — 

 if these men, these master gardeners, were 

 content to live their whole lives and expect 

 nothing but a promise of future glory for 

 their masterpieces, their trees — should 

 not we, their disciples, be done with 

 ephemeral gardens, and find our happi- 

 ness as they did in initiating plans which 

 may endure. 



You buy a home in the country. You 

 hire a gardener to make you a world of 

 flowers. A gentle-voiced, silent- man steps 

 forth to bid the flowers come. And they do 

 come, worlds and worlds of flowers and he 

 — the silent man — finds his happiness. 



You engage a landscape architect. He, 

 the far-seeing man, withdraws within him- 

 self, and evolves a vision of supreme beauty, 

 and his dream of your landscape takes 

 him into a world apart. He finds his 

 happiness. 



Time goes on, and the vistas grow more 

 beautifully enframed, but you do not find 

 your happiness. 



"What is it all about, this joy of gardens ? " 

 I hear you say. 



"Why, it is just like buying a picture. I 

 merely put up the money. It is an illusion, 

 like everything else." And yet you know 

 that the architect and the gardener have not 

 the look of men who follow illusions. Your 

 desire to discover the secret of their happi- 

 ness leads you to the gardener. You Step 

 into what seems a sanctuary of flowers, it 

 has been so loved by the silent man, and you 

 turn to where, perhaps, a Japanese imperial 

 iris has lifted its regal head, and you stoop 

 to gather a blossom. A hurried, anxious 

 step comes across the path. A gentle-voiced 

 man, hastens to the flower, leans over it 

 protectingly, as if it were a shrine: "Ah, sir, I 

 beg of you, not to-day; perhaps to-morrow 

 you may cut, but not to-day. See the blos- 

 som is not yet perfect." 



Then you go to where the landscape 

 architect is superintending the layout of 

 your grounds. You suggest certain changes. 

 "Your idea, sir, would be quite correct in 

 some places, but it would spoil my design 

 should it be carried out here." 



The architect has been hired at much 

 cost, so you leave him alone to work out his 

 happiness and his dreams, and you hear 

 the clang of a gate. You are standing with- 

 out the wall of your own garden. 



And you turn to walk — - whither ? Not 

 in your garden — but on the outside of some 

 other man's garden and you begin to under- 

 stand that these men who are dreaming and 

 watching and loving the things in your garden 

 are absorbing from your own earth the 

 happiness which should be yours, and they 

 are not only being enriched by your rightful 

 treasure of happiness but you are actually 

 paying them to take it from you. 



Oh — Mr. Worldman, believe me, the 

 joy- of it all is not to own a garden, but to 

 make a garden; to feel that your intelligence 

 is back of every flower that blooms and 

 every tree that grows; to be yourself the man 

 who dreams! 



