Art Out-of -Doors 



hood ; but farther away the design might 

 gradually pass into informality, until a nat- 

 uralistic plantation of shrubs should encircle 

 the boundaries and mask all but the most 

 desirable points of outlook from the house. 



In smaller grounds a more consistently 

 formal scheme would often be appropriate — 

 some truly architectural arrangement of 

 trees and shrubs and flower-beds. And 

 there are spots in Newport where an artist 

 would hardly object even if the trees and 

 shrubs were cKpped to symmetrical shapes. 

 In the very smallest grounds one or two trees 

 near the house or the gate might suffice, and 

 the whole of the ground be given up to a 

 formal flovvxr-garden, either wuth plots of 

 grass and French parterres, as in the little 

 parks of Paris, or with freely growing flow- 

 ers in rectangular box - edged borders, af- 

 ter the old colonial scheme, or even with 

 carpet-bedding carefully designed and con- 

 sistently employed, as in the courtyard of 

 Charlecote Hall — a background of gravel 

 being preferable then to the background of 

 grass which usually throws the vivid colors 

 of such beds into undue rehef. Very small 



17S 



