THE PRACTICE OF GARDEN DESIGN, 



385 



I for one am not prepared to quarrel with this critic, and I may add 

 that Englishmen have no need to quarrel with the accidents of chance 

 developments. From the days when the storm wrecked the Invincible 

 Armada to the days of the late Boer war we have come through, or rather 

 bungled through, often more by fortunate accidents and by the fortunate 

 tumbling into a set of circumstances — in other words — more by chance 

 than by deliberation. For my part I rather rejoice in the satire of our 

 critic, though in the main he is wrong. Everyone who aspires to lay out 

 a garden must believe in a proper cohesive plan as a basis of operations, 

 and it is no discredit to an artist to be able to prepare a well-thought-out 

 plan, accurately measured, with levels and sections, with every garden 

 department arranged for handy and convenient control and ease of 

 working. 



A great number of clients that have employed me have started without 

 this necessary plan thought out in its bearings and levels ; for the most 

 part they have been men of excellent and original ideas, but they found 

 as they went along in this haphazard fashion, which the architectural 

 critic makes fun of (and here he is right), that they had to keep altering 

 and transplanting and re-forming here and there to accommodate each nice 

 bit that they became possessed of, and in the end they got discouraged. 

 Whereas, if they had started with a scheme, or at least a policy, which 

 does not by any means bind them to a hard-and-fast agreement to carry 

 out all the details or features, almost all their disappointments and much 

 expense and worry might have been saved. This, then, is my first piece 

 of advice to all who desire to lay out a garden, large or small : Have 

 a well-thought-out plan on paper, drawn to a workable scale, and, if the 

 ground is not perfectly flat (it is rather remarkable sometimes to see the 

 surprise of uninitiated people when you tell them how much rise and fall 

 their seemingly level land really has), have a proper section also made to 

 accord in scale with the plan. 



I never knew this method to fail, and I have clients who have been at 

 work for over twenty years who have garden and estate improvement 

 plans framed in their business room or estate office, and each season, as 

 the time comes round, when the garden is about to yield up its glories, 

 there are some few suggestions that have occurred to them — a new erection 

 or a border to make, or perhaps a group of Scotch firs interspersed with 

 silver birch, or a mass of oaks, or some shelter to plant — and so we have 

 a field day and set them out. If the alterations are likely to interfere 

 with the general plan, then there has to be a readjustment of the complete 

 scheme and a careful balancing-up of all the other features. This 

 principle of having a proper plan to formulate and notify everything upon 

 is, I would state, and even reiterate, absolutely imperative, and what may 

 be called the policy of centralization. If you draw from any point, either 

 within or without a circle to its centre, says Euclid, none of the lines can 

 possibly clash ; but if you have not a centre to work to, or from, you have 

 all kinds of tangential intersections and clashings. Do not fear to go to 

 a little extra trouble in establishing your foundations is the counsel of 

 every wise builder, and a little wordiness lavished in pleading the need of 

 this essential is not, I am sure, wasted. You will never regret it — at any 

 rate I never knew anyone who did. I have known scores who have 



VOL. XXXIV. C G 



