CHAPTER VI 
ORNAMENTAL WATERS, TREES AND WOODLAND 
The Lake. 
There are in Kew three sheets of water of sufficient size to be worthy 
of notice, all of which are illustrated in these pages. First in import- 
ance, and largest in area, is the Lake. This feature 
of Kew, which adds more to the landscape charms of 
the place than any other, is of purely artificial origin. When its 
construction was begun by Sir William Hooker in 1856, the 4J acres 
which it covers were on the same, or practically the same, level as 
the surrounding ground. Even at that time, however, a portion 
of the site was marshy. It is interesting to recall the fact that, one 
hundred years before, the famous Merlin’s Cave of the old Rich- 
mond Gardens stood somewhere near the south end of the Lake, 
and that close to it was a pond. The excavation, begun in 1856, 
was carried on until 1861, when water was admitted by a culvert 
from the Thames. The area was enlarged to its present size, and 
the contour improved, by Sir Joseph Hooker in 1870. In later years, 
under the direction of Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, it has been greatly 
improved. The banks have been sloped and graded, new vistas 
and views opened, and everything possible done to disguise its artificial 
origin. So successful have these efforts been that strangers to Kew 
rarely regard it as other than natural. 
The right use of artificial water is generally considered one of 
the most difficult things in the gardener’s art. There are two ways 
in which it can be dealt with — the obviously formal 
and the natural. That this piece of water is a con- 
spicuously successful example of the latter our illus- 
trations show. One of its greatest charms is that the whole of it can 
never be seen at once. Traversing its banks, one comes upon fresh 
beauties at every few steps, and there is always left that delightful 
sense of curiosity to arouse and satisfy which is one of the greatest 
triumphs in landscape art. The four islands that diversify its sur- 
face, covered as they are with luxuriant vegetation, do much to 
95 
Water in the 
Landscape. 
