PART II 
ENGLISH LANDSCAPE GARDENING AT KEW 
CHAPTER I 
LANDSCAPE ART AT KEW 
If one were asked to define the leading principle upon which the 
artistic treatment of the Kew landscape was based in recent times, 
it could not be more tersely expressed than in the words of Sir William 
Thiselt on-Dyer : “ Landscape effects at Kew should be suave and 
ample.” 
As Kew covers nearly 300 acres, there would appear to be no 
necessity for cramped or patchy treatment. Yet there are several 
things which militate against entire freedom in this matter. The 
garden on three sides is bounded by buildings exhibiting various degrees 
of ugliness — from the sheds of corrugated iron on the Brentford side 
to the streets of slate-roofed villas on the others. All these have to 
be shut out. Kew, primarily, is a botanic garden, where trees, shrubs, 
and other plants have to be grown for purposes of study and com- 
parison, irrespectively of their value in the landscape. Then its 
natural peculiarities — a flat surface and a dry, hungry soil ; the 
fact of its being a public garden where crowds have to be accommo- 
dated and in some degree controlled ; its frequently polluted atmo- 
sphere, — all these are hampering in their several degrees, either by 
rendering inadmissible certain modes of treatment, or by restricting 
the choice of planting material. 
Yet, with all these disadvantages, Kew manages to represent 
in a very estimable way the typical English Garden — the garden 
. which, as we believe, has a deeper-rooted, better- 
Garde”n^ Sl1 wear ^ n g charm than any other type of garden the 
world can show. What are the much-vaunted gardens 
of Italy, with their terraces, their marble masonry and fountains, 
their palms and aloes, dark cypresses and olives, or the arid, stark, 
compass-and-ruler garden of the Versailles model, in comparison 
with an English garden of the best type, with its noble trees and 
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