GARDEN DESIGN, 



applied. Here are a few words about 

 such by one Percy Bysshe Shelley, 

 whose clear eyes saw beauty if there 

 was any to be seen in earth or sky : 



We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles 

 full of statues, vases, fountains and colonnades. In 

 all that belongs essentially to a garden they are extra- 

 ordinarily deficient. 



A few more by Victor Hugo : 



There fountains gush from the petrified gods, 

 only to stagnate ; trees are forced to submit to the 

 grotesque caprices of the shears and line. Natural 

 beauty is everywhere contradicted, inverted, upset, 

 destroyed. 



And Robert Southey tells us of one 



where the walks were sometimes of lighter or 

 darker gravel, red or yellow sand, and, when such 

 materials were at hand, pulverised coal and shells. 

 The garden itself was a scroll-work cut very nar- 

 row, and the interstices filled with sand of different 

 colours to imitate embroidery. 



Such gardens may be called formal 

 without too much disregard of lan- 

 guage, and yet one might plant every 

 one of them beautifully without in the 

 least altering their outline. // is only 

 where the pla?its of a garden are rigidly 

 set out in geometrical design, as in car- 

 pet-gardehing and bedding-out that the 

 term £< -formal" is rightly applied. 



We live in a time when men write 

 about garden design unmeaning words 

 or absolute nonsense ; these, as any 

 one may see, are men who have had 

 no actual contact with the work. They 

 think garden design is a question that 

 can be settled on a drawing-board, and 

 have not the least idea that in any true 

 sense the art is not possible without 

 knowledge of many beautiful living 

 things, and that the right planting of a 

 country place is of far greater import- 

 ance than the ground-plan about the 

 house. 



In many books on garden design 

 the authors misuse words and confuse 

 ideas. One, writing on the gardens of 

 Hampton Court, is not satisfied with 

 the terms " garden design," or " lay- 

 ing out gardens," but uses the word 

 " gardenage." Another writes " lay- 

 out " for " plan." Many, not satisfied 

 with the good word, " landscape gar- 

 dener," used by Loudon, Repton, and 

 many other excellent men, call them- 

 selves " landscape architects " — a stu- 

 pid term of French origin implying 

 the union of two absolutely distinct 

 studies, one dealing with varied life in 

 a thousand different kinds and the 

 natural beauty of the earth, and the 

 other with stones and bricks and their 

 putting together. The training for 

 either of these arts is wide apart from 

 the training demanded for the other, 

 and the earnest practice of one leaves 

 no time, even if there were the genius, 

 for the other. 



The term landscape-planting is 

 often scoffed at by these writers, yet it 



Landscape 



is a good one with a 



gardening. clear meaning, which 

 is the grouping and 

 growth of trees in natural forms as 

 opposed to the universal lining, clip- 

 ping, and shearing of the Dutch ; and 

 the acceptance of the natural forms of 

 the earth and the natural incidence of 

 light and shade and breadth as the true 

 guide in all artistic planting. The term 

 landscape-gardening is a true and, in 

 the fullest sense, good English one, 

 with a clear and even beautiful mean- 

 ing, namely, the study of the forms 

 of the earth, and frank acceptance of 



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