GARDEN DESIGN-COMPARATIVE, HISTORICAL, AND ETHICAL. 373 



GARDEN DESIGN: COMPARATIVE, HISTORICAL, AND 

 ETHICAL. — II. 



By Thomas H. Mawson, Hon. A.R.I.B.A. 



[Lecture delivered September 15, 11)08.] 



The delight of searching out and meditating upon my subject has given 

 me many choice thoughts, and many helpful ones in my practice, because 

 what may be to most, merely the perusal of accounts of ancient gardens, 

 is to me and to others "in the way" of designing gardens, a visible 

 picture — a recreation of the mind — and it makes one long for the power, 

 not alone to present to my readers word pictures of these vast accumula- 

 tions of ancient thought and skill, but to give coloured representations of 

 them. Such skill, however, demands the devotion of half a life time, and 

 even then, as we see in such men as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, one 

 man can only do a measure of justice to one phase or era of this vast 

 subject, as he has done to the ancient Roman phase of architecture and 

 gardenage. Even then we cannot people them ; we cannot convey sight, 

 and scent, and sound, nor transport our beholders to the atmosphere : in 

 short, our attempts lack life, and, at best, all art combined, whether 

 descriptive or pictorial, is not a substitute for life. 



It is only as we apply ourselves to enter into, and cultivate our own 

 particular branch of horticulture or of design, that we can succeed in 

 imparting to others what has stirred us, or that we can hope to be in that 

 condition to receive. The beholder or listener must, first, in his inner 

 consciousness, be in possession of life, the greatest gift of all, and that life 

 must be at least fairly vigorous and growing ; otherwise he will only get 

 his ears tickled by lectures — pictures will only please the lust of his eye : 

 he will be more amused than edified. If the light within us is life, we 

 find that we cannot sever the past from the present, any more than we 

 can sever our language from the past. 



Near certain of the mountain farms of Westmoreland there are old pits 

 where farmers used to burn mountain turf, which yielded a nutritive 

 manure by a process of smouldering like to modern charcoal burning ; but 

 this process had to be stopped because, on a mountain where several 

 farmers shared the right to pasture their sheep, one man consumed the 

 fine mountain turf at the expense of the others. In our present occupa- 

 tion, however, we can fearlessly burn and utilize to advantage the ashes 

 which are made available (although, be it remembered, there is a certain 

 skill required in rendering them serviceable) to enrich our gardens in the 

 way of design. 



This was my lead in, as pointing to the trend of my present lecture, 

 but I found later that the deep-thinking Aristotle (in quoting whom I am 

 calling a witness before I have declared the case) had forestalled me, and 

 had even distinguished both the elements for enrichment, and also 



