8 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



The cut flower is no longer part of a manifestation of 

 the will of nature ; rather it is a slave — beautiful, it may 

 be, but branded and soul-destroyed. 



Regarded as decoration, I consider cut flowers in a 

 house much as fashion now looks on shell ornaments, or 

 picture-frames made of acorns, as things inappropriate 

 and childish. Of course, in a town there is some excuse 

 for them, for even cut flowers carry the mind to beautiful 

 associated conditions ; but cut flowers in the country 

 seem ludicrously like lumber, just as bedsteads and 

 toilet-services and cruet-stands placed in a garden would 

 be lumber too. 



The love of cut flowers is really but another mani- 

 festation of the spirit which hankers after *'yews carved 

 into dragons, pagodas, marmosets," and the other tree- 

 monsters scoffed at by Rousseau, who added that he 

 was convinced that the time is at hand, when we shall 

 no longer have in gardens anything that is found in the 

 country ; we shall tolerate neither plants nor shrubs ; 

 we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour- 

 work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of 

 nothing." 



Indeed, there is in many quarters even now a grow- 

 ing desire for the kind of new garden," which old 

 William Lawson advocated : Your Gardiner can frame 

 your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, 

 ready to give battell : or swift running Greyhounds : or 

 of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the 

 Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall 

 not waste your corne, nor much your coyne. Mazes 

 well framed a man's height, may perhaps make your 

 friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot 

 recover himselfe without your helpe." 



Of course, the cutting of flowers is a long way from 

 this ; still it is difficult to see where a line can be drawn 

 once the worship of ''gardeners' gardens" has begun. 



