166 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
and meadows near the house, so as not to obstruct any 
prospect and yet make the place look warm and shel¬ 
tered.” Which also sounds doubtful, to my mind, 
leaving an impression of stuffiness, clutter and con¬ 
fusion. 
This was indeed a period of degeneracy in garden 
art; the pendulum was still swinging, from the impetus 
given it by Dufresnoy in the first years of the century, 
towards the extreme of absurdity in the imitation of 
Nature; for men were yet naive and lacking in the 
cunning necessary for such a task, hence the crowning 
folly of planting dead trees among a living group, 
which was near at hand! Great and irreparable havoc 
had been wrought in many of England’s fine old 
gardens, too, by the innovations of these Nature 
fanatics; and a queer conglomeration of shifting ideas 
had been brought to the business of garden develop¬ 
ment in America. Which gives a wealth of material 
from which to reconstruct, now, the work of the 
second, and part of the third, century behind us. But 
it is material that must be carefully sifted to eliminate 
its chaff—its follies, extravagances and altogether 
hideous absurdities. It is not enough that we should 
know what old-fashioned gardens in general were like; 
nor that we can restore them, from data in hand, as 
builders restore a temple of the ancients. Beauty is 
the first requisite always; only the old gardens that 
