CHAPTER XII 



NOTES ON GARDEN DESIGN {continued) 



"Terraces. — In the very earliest records of systematised 

 gardening, allusions are made to terraces. They were, at 

 first, merely used with roughly built retaining walls for 

 strictly utilitarian purposes in hillside gardens, but their 

 decorative possibilities were observed at least 4000 years ago. 

 This rapidly became so marked, that the terrace gardens of 

 Babylon have a special place in the history of that very 

 ancient civilisation. Their use spread, by way of Egypt and 

 Greece, to Italy. In that country they soon became of such 

 importance that the villa gardens of the ancient Roman 

 aristocracy — almost always built among the hills for health 

 and coolness in summer — contain to this day examples of 

 terrace work which have never been surpassed. During the 

 great Italian Renaissance, the most famous artists were 

 frequently employed to design these precipice gardens ; and 

 the more difficult the problem, the greater delight they seem 

 to have taken in their work. 



As a feature of a formal garden near a house, terraces 

 have for several centuries been utilised in England. They 

 should, however, not be constructed unless the style of the 

 house demands them, and the lie of the ground is distinctly 

 undulating, not to say hilly. When a garden is situated in a 

 flat country, the less artificial moving of soil there is, the 

 greater the feeling of ' repose ' will be. Instead of making 

 terraces or miniature hills and valleys, which must obviously 

 seem out of keeping with the surrounding landscape, variety 

 can be better obtained by effective massing or grouping of 

 tall trees in some parts of the garden and small ones in others. 



