GARDEN DESIGN. 



85 



seen to be so absurd that the owners 

 quietly turf the spot over and let it 

 grow in green sward, and hence in 

 many country places we see turf where 

 there ought to be a real flower-garden. 

 The good gardener is happy adorning 

 old walls or necessary terraces, as at 

 Haddon, as he knows walls are good 

 friends in every way both as back- 

 grounds and shelters ; but he is as 

 happy in a lawn garden, in a rich valley 

 soil, or on the banks of a river, or on 

 those gentle hill slopes that ask for no 

 terraces, or in the hundreds of gar- 

 dens in and near towns and cities of 

 Europe that are enclosed by walls and 

 where there is no room for landscape 

 effect (many of them distinctly beau- 

 tiful too, as in Mr. Fox's garden at 

 Falmouth) ; as much at home in a 

 border-castle garden as in the lovely 

 Penjerrick, like a glimpse of a valley 

 in some Pacific isle, or Mount Usher, 

 cooled by mountain streams and shel- 

 tered by their rocks. 



The same architect turns on the 

 waterworks as his chief solace : 



But of all the fascinating sources of effect in 

 garden-making the most fascinating are waterworks. 

 An expensive luxury as a rule, but they well re- 

 pay the expense. 



Well, there is some evidence of the 

 sort of design these afford ; some in- 

 stances terrible in their 



Waterworks 1 • / 1 • 1 



garden design, ugliness (one hideous 

 atBayreuth). And with 

 all the care that a rich State may take 

 of them, can we say that the effect 

 at Versailles is artistic or delightful ? 

 Water tumbling into the blazing 

 streets of Roman cities, and nobly de- 

 signed fountains supplying the people 

 with water was right ; but in our cool 



land artificial fountains are very dif- 

 ferent in effect, and often hideous ex- 

 travagance. Of their ugliness there is 

 evidence in nearly every city in Europe, 

 including our own Trafalgar Square, 

 and that fine work at the head of the 

 Serpentine. We have also our Crystal 

 Palace and Chatsworth designed as 

 they might be by a theatrical super who 

 had suddenly inherited a millionaire's 

 fortune. What the effect of this is I 

 need hardly say, but with all our British 

 toleration of ugliness I have never 

 heard anybody enthusiastic about their 

 artistic merits. So far as our island 

 countries go, nothing asks for more 

 care and modest art than the introduc- 

 tion into the garden or home land- 

 scape of artificial water. Happily our 

 countries are rich in the charms of 

 natural water — too often neglected in 

 its planting. 



Among the great peoples of old, 

 so far as known to our human story, 

 was one supreme in art, 

 Hollow talk of from buildings chisel- 



the day about 11 1 v 1 1 



art# led as delicately as the 



petals of the wild rose, 

 to the smallest coins in their pockets 

 and bits of baked clay in their graves, 

 and this is clear to all men from what 

 remains of their work gathered from 

 the mud and dust of ages. And from 

 that time of deathless beauty in art 

 comes the voice of one who saw this 

 lovely art in its fulness. The greatest 

 and fairest things are do?ie by Nature 

 and the lesser by Art (Plato). There is 

 not a garden in Britain free from con- 

 vention and carpet-gardening, from the 

 cottage-gardens nestling beneath the 

 Surrey hills to those fair and varied 



