PARK AND CEMETERY. 
r-3 1 
WHERE AND HOW TO USE FORMAL GARDENING 
BY F. A. WAUGH 
In 3 'ears gone by there has been much heated argument 
in America and in England over the comparative merits of 
the formal and the natural styles of gardening. It has been 
considered to be decided that the natural style is the Eng- 
lish style, and also that it is the one most popular in Ameri- 
ca and best adapted to our country, our climate, our land- 
scape and our social conditions. In other words many people 
think it a settled proposition that the natural style is the one 
for America: and then some people jump to the further 
conclusion that the formal style is undesirable or wholly 
inadmissible. 
If it is merely a matter of taste, then there can be no fur- 
ther argument,— dc gustibus non disputandum. And in 
many instances it is truly a mere matter of taste. If any man 
or woman will make a garden, and if there are no circum- 
stances which make either style particularly appropriate or 
inappropriate, then he or she should be free to choose. How- 
ever, much some critics may assure us that the formal gar- 
den is always best, or other cranks may assert that the lor- 
PUBLIC SQUARE IN BERLIN. 
mal garden is always wrong, these extreme views must ap- 
pear to reasonable people to be quite untenable. 
The simple fact is that the natural style is better adapted 
to large parks, public reservations, great estates, etc., while 
the formal style is better adapted to small private gardens, 
especially such as are enclosed and are in close proximity to 
the house. We are now having built in America a great 
many formal gardens, and the only question which we may 
ask is whether they are located in fit surroundings, and 
whether they are correctly designed. For the fact is that 
some of these so-called formal gardens are horribly de- 
signed. They are made by men ( and often by women ) who 
know nothing about gardening, nothing about architecture, 
and nothing about the general principles of design. What 
we really need in this connection is a better appreciation 
of the formal style, a closer study of its adaptations, and a 
more thorough going knowledge of the principles of struc- 
ture which underlie the design of formal gardens. 
The formal style is particularly adapted to the small 
public parks or small city squares now being developed in all 
enterprising cities. Naturalistic gardening is out of the ques- 
tion in such surroundings, while the formal style may be 
easily employed to secure harmonious and pleasing effects. 
A SIMPLE FORMAI, ARRANGEMENT. 
This is nowhere better to lie seen than in the modern Ger- 
man cities, like Berlin, Frankfort and Cologne, where pub- 
lic improvements of this sort have been going forward with 
a real artistic frenzy for the past ten years. In one of the 
pictures shown here ive see a view of a typical square in 
the new section of Berlin. The place is ornamented with a 
dignified stone behidere, with stone seats, and marble foun 
tains, but it has also a wealth of shrubs, climbers and at- 
tracti\e beds of tulips and other flowers, and wide stretches 
of well-kept green lawn. 
In private gardens the formal style reaches its best ef- 
fects only with the expenditure of considerable sums of mon- 
ey'. It is not a fact that the formal style is necessarily ex- 
pensive ; but it is true that the owner can spend all he has 
on a very small formal garden if he tries to reach a high 
pitch of beauty. 
Summer houses, temples, pergolas, fountains, sundials, 
.scidpture, seats, water basins, and all the other beautiful ele- 
ments of such a garden can hardly be omitted altogether, 
and if furnished to any attractive scale they cost heavily. 
Another picture shows a first rate example of the sculptured 
fountain, with a very attracti^-e background of foliage, such 
as is almost necessary' to give a formal garden its proper 
charm. In the third picture shown we have a simpler style 
of ornament, but even such a vase as that shown here will 
cost from $100 to $1,000 : and even the clipped arbor vitaes 
are not to be had for a song nor to be maintained without 
labor. 
There are many people in .America today who can afford 
to indulge their taste in formal gardening. Where they show 
real taste, where they choose appropriate locations for their 
gardens, when they adopt logical plans, and when they carry 
out the |)lans with sufficient richness of detail and keep the 
whole in neatness and order, the results are very gratifying. 
