RENAISSANCE GARDENS. 



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Wilkie's declaration morally, who starts with that which most appeals to 

 himself and is truly educated in his progress, ends in the pursuit of that 

 which makes for the suppression of self. 



The classic which is the parent of the Eenaissance (for there is no 

 real classic to-day) is more the scholar's domain ; the Renaissance garden 

 is the scholar's garden, and a scholar is highly selective. His motto is : 

 "A little, but good." He does not wish for the interminable mazy over- 

 growth, but wants a few select examples, yet of high class, and with 

 ample room for display. If one may illustrate the method of a classicalist 

 or scholar, out of thirty good models he evolves one perfect example much 

 in the same way that the Greek sculptors did in their perfect statues. 

 They took a part from one and a part from another, selecting always the 

 perfect and eliminating what was imperfect until they got a Venus of 

 Milo or a Hercules as near to the perfection of the human form as possible. 

 They fused the whole together in the furnace of their mind, and the 

 result was one perfected presentment, not a composite collection after the 

 derided glue-pot order. 



The Renaissance or classic method of design is not easy of accom- 

 plishment, its large spaces are apt to become vacant looking, and 

 the ornamentation applied often looks meagre, and then we set to work to 

 atone for it by multiplicities. I agree with certain who ask, May we not 

 get too austere in the pursuit of this style, and may not the result be too 

 bald ? Most decidedly so, and there are many houses and some gardens 

 that are after this style that we could mention which are positively 

 forbidding. 



This is one of the dangers, but in avoiding Scylla we may encounter 

 Charybdis. Because certain fail of the accomplishment (and which of us 

 is there who does not fail at times ?) it is no warrant to carp and sneer at 

 the very existence of the grand style and manner. 



On the one hand, those who, whilst professing adherence to the 

 Renaissance style of design, sneer at that which has the free and natural 

 as its impulse, have not learnt either classic or Renaissance at all. 

 This is an axiom which works out to the same result if applied the other 

 way about, and which means that those who think they have caught the 

 spirit of that which is spontaneous and fresh, and yet sneer at the 

 scholarly methods of ordered design, have neither imbibed the one nor the 

 other. 



Nature is the boundless and unending mine of wealth from whence all 

 the resources of art are drawn, and in garden design we are in the domain 

 of art at once ; it is only a question of the extent of orderliness we are to 

 admit. If gardening and garden design are not thus to be classified, then 

 we must dump our mansion down like Thoreau's Walden shanty, and if 

 we imitate Thoreau our minds and thoughts become our garden of 

 cultivation, and a very beautiful garden it becomes too ; but Thoreau's 

 mind -gardening is not the profusion of the wild tangle of disarray in 

 which he lived. I noticed the same in Lord Rosebery's gardening speech 

 the other day at Cramond Flower Show, near Dalmeny. He playfully 

 confessed that he was not born with the gifts that make a gardener, 

 professing to be ignorant of flowers and horticulture generally, yet in 

 spite of this little disguise he presently went on to show that side of his 



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