XVII 
speaking thus about the cul- 
tivation of a love for natural 
beauty, I have by no means 
forgotten that the subject of 
my book is gardening art. 
An intelligent love for Nature is, in itself, 
a valuable possession, but it is an indispen- 
sable possession if we want to understand 
the aims and appreciate the results of the 
artist in gardening. It not only directs 
the eye insistently to the details of his work, 
but helps us to judge of it as a whole ; for 
if we have any artistic instinct at all, we 
cannot study Nature’s particulars without 
noticing her broad effects. The better we 
see individual plants, the better we see the 
groups which they form in the foreground 
of a natural picture, and the compositions 
into which they fall when the eye takes 
a wider range. As each plant becomes 
specialized to the perceptive sense its con- 
351 
