as show places, by the lavish display of expensive ornamental 

 benches, fountains, vases, ^atues, etc. They were grouped in 

 circles or Wretched in colonnades across one's vision, and the 

 picfture has seemed to be, not one of harmony and ease but, to 

 put it mildly, one of discord and discomfort, creating a feeling 

 which I have called " Garden Indigestion." 



Luxury, like some flowers, grows faster than culture, and 

 both need pruning to become harmonious, and though wealth 

 may order garden ornaments by the carload, it is only culture 

 that can either properly selecH: them or properly place them. 

 All the errors of overloaded spaces cannot be corrected, but 

 many can be, especially by the kind hand of time and intelli- 

 gent elimination, and, already, there are scattered here and 

 there both large and small gardens where the ornaments do 

 not ^ick out and hit one's sense of appropriateness in the eye, 

 and thus detracH; from the harmony of the flower scheme, but 

 seem to take their right position in the general arrangement. 



Of course architectural ornaments properly used are a 

 delight in any well regulated garden. They are the accents at 

 intere^ing places by silent pools. They draw one away down 

 long walks, they shimmer in the splash of lovely fountains, 

 make silhouettes in the moonlight, and speak to us of beauty 

 in permanent forms. Our makers the Italians knew their 

 secret as they knew many others, borrowed from the Greeks or 

 gleaned from the symbolic gardens of Persia and India. Then, 

 too, our cousins in England, that gateway of the East, knew 

 well how to use beautiful ornaments in eloquent ways, and 

 the French ta^e in the Renaissance, to say nothing of glorious 

 Spain, was very perfecft. What a fund of History to draw upon! 



For all forms of adornment are very old. It is only nature 

 that is always new, in every land and with every Spring. In a 

 garden I knew, not a hundred miles from Boston, the flowers. 



94 



