82 



FLORA AND SYLVA, 



them as the best of all for purposes of 

 beauty or use of planter or gardener, 

 save where the surface is so steep that 

 one must alter it to work upon it. 



We accept the varied slopes of the 

 river bank and the path of the river as 

 not only better than those of a Dutch 

 canal, but a hundred times better ; and 

 not only for their beauty, but for the 

 story they tell of the earth herself in 

 ages past. We gratefully take the les- 

 sons of Nature in her most beautiful 

 aspects of vegetation as to breadth, airy 

 spaces, massing and grouping of the 

 woods that fringe the valleys or gar- 

 land the mountain rocks as better be- 

 yond all that words can express than 

 anything men can invent or ever have 

 invented. 



We love and prefer the divinely- 

 settled form of the tree or shrub or 

 flower to any possible expression of 

 man's misguided efforts with shears, 

 such as we see illustrated in old Dutch 

 books where every living thing is 

 clipped to conform to an idea of 

 " design " that arose in the minds of 

 men to whom all trees were green 

 things to be cut into ugly walls. We 

 repudiate as false and ridiculous the 

 common idea of the pattern-monger's 

 book, that these aspirations of ours are 

 in any way " styles," the inventions of 

 certain men, as we know that they are 

 based on eternal truths of Nature, free 

 as the clouds to any one who climbs 

 the hills and has eyes to see. 



The fact that ignorant men, who 

 have never had the chance of learn- 

 ing these lessons, make pudding-like 

 clumps in a vain attempt to diversify 



the surface of the ground and other 

 foolish things, does not in the least 



The true test tUm US aside fr ° m fo1 " 



ofa lowing the true and 



flower-garden. i .1 



only ways to get the 

 best expression possible of beauty from 

 any given morsel of the earth's surface 

 we have to plant. We sympathise with 

 the landscape painter's work as re- 

 flecting for us, though often in a faint 

 degree, the wondrously varied beauty 

 of the earth, and in the case of the 

 great master-painters full of truth and 

 beauty. We hold that the only true 

 test of our efforts in planting or gar- 

 dening is the picture. Do we frighten 

 the artist away or do we bring him to 

 see a garden so free from ugly patterns 

 and ugly colours that, seen in a beauti- 

 ful light, it would be worth painting ? 

 There is not, and there never can be, 

 any other true test. 



Even if our aim is right, the di- 

 rection, as in many other matters, may 

 be vitiated by stupidity, as in gardens 

 where false lines and curves abound, 

 as in the Champs Elysee. It is quite 

 right to see the faults of this and to 

 laugh at them ; but how about those 

 who plant in true and artistic ways ? 

 In the case we mention there is cease- 

 less and inartistic and vain throwing 

 up of the ground, and sharp and ugly 

 slopes, which are often against the 

 cultivation of the thing planted. 



The rejection of clipped forms 

 and book patterns of trees set out like 

 lamp-posts, costly walls where none 

 are wanted, and of all the too facile 

 labours of the drawing-board "artist," 

 in gardens first affected in England 



