388 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



make the imlikeliest plants grow almost anywhere) or the architect's bald 



insipidities. 



I once reviewed the gardener's standpoint and the designer's as follows, 

 and I am assured it is about right : the designer's ideal is the cloistered 

 garden of meditation and reflection wherein he wishes to be weaned from 

 all outside ; where in a kind of rapture undisturbed he may rest deep- 

 hidden among avenues and glades, surrounded with felicitous groupings 

 of gay flowers and abundant fruitfulness, all shaped and beautified 

 according to his inner consciousness. His line of thought leans more, 

 perhaps, to the realm of picture and imagination, yet now and again it is 

 given us to view that ideal combination of forms, features, and images, for 

 " truth is stranger than fiction." As I said in my last lecture the 

 designer is always being beaten in wrestling to achieve the attainment, 

 yet he clingingly cherishes the ideal. This is the objective or the 

 designer's side, and I pity the man that has not such a vein in his soul. 



In contrast is the subjective or the gardener's practical side. He 

 must be ever intent upon improving what is, who finds all the forces with 

 which he has to contend bristling with life. An overlay or a little 

 abstraction may cost him dearly. If he is not up and doing betimes when 

 Nature calls for pruning, thinning, trimming, or his correcting, controlling 

 hand, there has to be an increased strain or disaster. Even in winter, 

 the time when the forces which need his energies are in comparative rest, 

 he has to be like a capable general amassing his stores to cope with the 

 forthcoming multitudinous outburst of living energy on all hands and 

 sides. There is no rest or reflection for him. It is "touch-and-go" 

 almost the whole year round ; alert, immediate, and prompt he must be. 

 If he is not so he wakes up some morning to find all mixed and scattered 

 and mystified. This is what I may call the subjective or the practical 

 side of gardenage. 



I am not going to waste much time upon the feud of formal and 

 informal, or the natural disposal of land. We cannot now make 

 a garden of Eden, where the clime was so favourable that the ground 

 upon which there was no rain supplied all that was needed for the 

 comfort and luxurious ease of our first parents. The weather that we 

 have been experiencing during the last few weeks would drive even a 

 camper-out indoors, much more those who would sleep under the dome of 

 the heavens. We have to begin with the practical problem of a covert 

 from the elements, in other words a house ; moreover, the exigencies of life 

 in and about that home are such that one cannot always, even in a garden, 

 afford time to go the furthest way round for the nearest. It is very 

 entertaining to be sent round by Kew to get to Hampstead, but we have 

 not always time, even if there is a promise of tea in a neat tea-house on 

 the way ; and so, in the main, we come to make, almost always, straight 

 paths for our feet instead of crooked ones. These the man who reckons 

 to hold a brief for Nature scorns, and thunders down upon us, furious in 

 his wrath. If, on the other hand, it is pleasingly suggestive to turn a 

 path round a knoll or to run it effectively between planted banks, or even 

 ;i drive at times, so that it adds to the pleasure of the home to see the 

 nicely equipped horses emerge from a little woodland and spin round 

 towards the house in a graceful sweep, so much the better ; do so, and if it 



