NOTES ON GARDEN DESIGN 165 



can always be seen to far greater advantage when green and 

 smooth turf is spread close up to them, than when arranged 

 in a stiff border alongside a gravel path. A lawn, embordered 

 here and there with flowers, backgrounded with shrubs and 

 trees, varied in shape, wandering off as it were into glades of 

 turf between shady trees, forms one of the most delightful 

 and satisfying features that can by any possibility be introduced 

 into a garden. 



Though its edges may well be ornamented with flower- 

 borders, the principal lawn should never be cut up by isolated 

 flower-beds dotted about its surface. And of all beds, the 

 kind to eliminate with utmost severity is that of a circular 

 shape set down, without object or reason, haphazard in a 

 lawn. For this practice not only destroys the chief reason 

 for the existence of the lawn — namely, the sense of peaceful 

 repose created by an uninterrupted expanse of smooth turf — 

 but is, also, perhaps the least advantageous way of displaying 

 the flowers themselves. If it is thought desirable to increase 

 the space for flowers, and that can only be done by curtailing 

 the lawn, probably the best method is to give up a part of 

 one side or end to a series of well-proportioned beds, in a 

 more or less geometrical design, with narrow turf walks 

 between. But every true garden lover will hesitate long 

 before sacrificing any portion of a feature so charming and 

 satisfying as a well-kept lawn. 



Wherever possible the ground for tennis, croquet or other 

 games should not be the principal, or ' beauty ' lawn. Courts 

 for these pastimes are compelled to be more or less stiffly 

 rectangular, and their surroundings should be plain and, to 

 a certain extent, unadorned. Comfort and convenience of 

 spectators, too, must be studied. It is decidedly against the 

 principle of garden convenience to be obliged to spend much 

 time in searching among flowers and shrubberies for lost balls. 

 Flowers, too, are apt to suffer in the process. All these con- 

 siderations make it extremely difficult to treat a stretch of 

 turf intended for games in such a manner as the lawn, whose 

 primary object is beauty, deserves. But when space is limited, 



