26 



The Garden Magazine, September, 1921 



and values that interest pajnters may 

 teach us much. The atmosphere of Corot, 

 skies of Diaz, and water of Daubigny are 

 ours to make such use of them as will help 

 to give us better pictures than ever were 

 painted. We want the spade of the for- 

 ester and the eye of the artist. The lie of 

 the ground must be studied in the way of 

 the leader of soldiers, and the quality of 

 the soil, as soil useless for arable may give 

 us noble woods. Landscape views, air, and 

 distances also must be studied, not only in 

 the place but from it to the neighborhood. 

 . . . There is no organized profession 

 to help. Any one may call himself a land- 

 scape gardener; a navvy who has some ex- 

 perience of wall and roadmaking, a job- 

 bing gardener, and others without any 

 training may offer to do the work. 



But how are we to know a landscape 

 gardener? By this sign, among others — 

 that he will study the ground thoroughly 

 first, and bring no plan in his pocket. He 

 will work on the ground and be able to 

 mark on it what he seeks to carry out. 

 Office plans are no substitutes for the thing 

 itself, but the custom of plans on paper is 

 so fixed that it is not easy to get this truth 

 seen. There can be no true work in land- 

 scape save by one who knows trees by 

 heart, and there is no royal road to that 

 knowledge save by life study. 



That success in gardening is 

 based primarily on an intimate 

 acquaintance with plants, Mr. 

 Robinson insists time and again, 

 and he may point to the English 

 gardening spirit for justification. 

 For nowhere else is there such a 

 keen popular knowledge of plants 

 as such; and nowhere else, as is 

 acknowledged, are gardens so 

 popular and so generally good. 



By no means the least valuable 

 chapter in the book is Mr. Robin- 

 son's forecast of the rock garden 

 of the future. With us rock gar- 



THE APPROACH 



Removal of the lower branches of ever- 

 greens is done consistently for Mr. 

 Robinson holds that such trees, 

 growing naturally in groups, do 

 lose their lower branches. 

 This clearing up opens the 

 view of the distant hill- 

 side. Japanese Box is 

 planted below; it 

 never grows high 



Mr. W. ROBINSON'S 

 GARDENS 



AT GRAVETYE 



Photographs by Leonard Barron 



SCOTCH FIR WALK 



" In natural forests or even 

 in wellplanted woods the 

 pine throws off its lower 

 branches and shows the dig- 

 nity of stem, the greatest 

 charm" 



