36 FLORA AND SYLVA, 



THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL. 



HOME LANDSCAPE AND HOME WOODS. 



Although our main object is to describe the treasures of the world of trees 

 and plants, the neglect of any study of planting or of garden design from an 

 artistic point of view makes us resolve to give a place to it. Recent talk there 

 has been plenty, but much of it is nothing more than what the old books 

 tell us — not a tenth part of what we shall have to think of in the planting of 

 a country place if we are to get the best our site and conditions allow of. 

 Anyone may plant and lay out a garden if he is content with stereotyped 

 plans ; but the question is a much larger one, and concerns many important 

 things which have for their object the best effect that can be got from the vast 

 treasures at our disposal. It is not only the health of the trees we have to 

 think of, but their placing in right ways ; light and shade, breadth, and what 

 artists know as "composition," dignity, and simplicity in planting, the right 

 adapting of beautiful living things to surface, soil, and climate. 



Recent writing has led to much confusion and obscuring of the essentials 

 at issue, and now the photographer has come in to confuse us more and more 

 with dread examples of ugliness and extravagance. He is usually one who 

 knows or cares little of the beauty of a country place in wood or landscape, 

 and who takes point blank aim at any showy thing about the house. His 

 results show a hideous waste of ugly pattern beds with scraps of miserable 

 plants, costly and wearisome stonework out of place, and all the ugly aspects 

 of the bastard Italian garden as understood in Britain, with seldom a visible 

 trace of true design. If we think of the cost of all this, and its evil effect on the 

 minds of the many who mistake it for what is best in gardening or planting, 

 we may well be amazed at the stupidity that mistakes it for art, or endures it 

 in the foreground of a fair landscape. Therefore we propose to publish articles 

 of things good in garden design, and to consider the larger question of laying 

 out the home landscape of country places, and also the woods and planting 

 near. We intend to illustrate this when good examples are found, in the hope 

 of making clear the central truth, never yet shown in any book : that it is in 

 variety and not in conformity that beauty must be sought. 



HOME WOODS. 



At the beautiful gate of the woods one happiness awaits us: we are not beset 

 by vain considerations about " styles," of which most works on garden design 

 are made up. And our home wood should be only a nobler kind of garden, 

 and may be so treated without in the least spoiling its value as a wood. 



We may see on a spring day in one place more beauty in a wood than in 

 any garden, from the bushes and plants wild in the place : Furze, Crab, Cow- 



