English Gardens 
ground further afield. The bowling-green, croquet-ground, 
and lawn-tennis courts have formed at one time or another 
necessary parts in the layout of even a small place. These 
flat pieces of the splendid turf which is so common in England 
are among the most beautiful features of the English garden. 
Here again the love for retirement suggests enclosing walls or 
hedges, so that the court or the green is really a great out-of- 
doors room, with garden seats and benches about, or perhaps 
in the more stately ones, busts on plinths in Italian fashion set 
against the somber green of the yew hedge. Again one sees 
that this feature is produced in direct response to a need. 
Level ground cannot always be obtained naturally, and the 
need of it has developed the terraces which abound in the hilly 
districts. These may be the mere formal treatment of the plat¬ 
form on which the house securely rests; or they may form the 
various divisions of the hillside garden ; or again, surrounding 
the sunken garden, they may give the pleasant walk and that 
most delightful of all views which one gets of a small garden, 
A LEVEL STRETCH 
