THE DECORATIVE CHARACTER OF CONIFERS. 



53 



face not with a phase of nature alone, but with a combination of 

 art and nature in the various directions more or less indicated 

 by the terms employed. Man in contact with nature thus quickly 

 imposes conditions of art. For the introduction of the Conifer^e 

 into this country we are indebted, as I have just said, to the exercise 

 of this art-faculty. Man has discerned the decorative value of 

 the Conifers and has introduced them to Britain, and they are 

 now not aliens, but so much parts of us that without them our 

 decorative resources would be impoverished indeed. What a 

 botanist regards and describes as natural distribution is the work 

 of nature, but there it stops. Whenever man selects a place for 

 a plant, or a plant for a place, he is then in the domain of art. 

 He then is exercising the faculty of taste, and he is dealing with 

 that which is to partake of the character we call decorative — • 

 though sometimes, through the exercise of a false judgment, 

 through lack of good taste, it is quite the reverse. 



This faculty of taste — call it sestheticism, sentiment, culture, 

 what you will — is an endowment of the human soul. What 

 we term fashion, either in flounces or flowers, either in garb or 

 garden, in the furnishing of the parlour or in planting a park, 

 introduces of necessity this exercise of taste. This displayed 

 determines the status, so to speak, of the person responsible, 

 and tells exactly to the discerning what his views may be on the 

 at times vexed questions which come within range of the canons 

 of " good taste." 



We are familiar with the ribbon border, the geometrical beds, 

 the floral devices of the flower garden ; the gay garters, the 

 ribbons, mottoes and monograms which were in so many places 

 such a conspicuous feature, say, in the Jubilee year. We have 

 seen eagles or peacocks, or the semblance of such, at times cut 

 out, or hacked out, of what would otherwise be an ornamental 

 tree. We have looked upon the wild garden, the evergreen 

 border, the Wooded slope, the little bit of nature-weaving here 

 and there, the beautiful single specimen tree in its proper place, 

 and the delicately arranged group of Conifers standing out in the 

 open which one is fortunate enough to find here and there. All 

 these are in their respective places, and upon their several lines, 

 indications of the application of principles dictated by individual 

 taste. 



The effects of combination of form and colour are considered 



