House £s? Garden 
THE PARTERRES OF THE VILLA ALBANI GARDENS 
An example of u how not to do it.” Designs of this nature have been justly apostrophized by Bacon : 11 You may see as 
good Sights many times in Tarts . 
completed work, the other is a series of sugges¬ 
tions. A formal garden is complete in itself— 
is not dependent upon extraneous relations. 
Starting from the house, as the dominant 
feature, the rhythm of the garden radiates 
to the boundary, and from thence back again 
to the house. There is no break in its con¬ 
tinuity, the rhythm is continuous. Each 
unit is an integral part in a homogeneous 
whole. The boundary is of great value in 
this style of garden. It is emphasized, 
demarked and designed with the special view 
of completing, or rather of making possible 
the completion of the picture. But with 
the majority of our gardens, the idea of a 
complete whole has been displaced by the 
more or less detached “formal feature”— 
here a dower garden; or a formal entrance, 
connected by a naturalistic intermediate link 
to a formal approach; or a pergola garden 
naively secreted in the outlying woodland. 
These features have no relation to anything 
in particular, and have no boundary to unite 
them in a uniform whole. To add to or 
subtract from or to alter the position of such 
formal features would cause no blank, would 
interrupt no harmony, would not destroy 
the entourage, for there is none. 
The three distinct components that con¬ 
stitute a formal garden—the site, the plan 
(which includes the house) and the planting 
scheme—must of necessity be in a relation 
one with another which compels a mutual 
introsusception. No one of them should 
be determined until a satisfactory inter-rela¬ 
tion of the three, with their respective 
details, justifies a decision. Hence the 
necessity of forming, as a preliminary step, 
a complete conception of the garden as a 
whole, if possible, in bird’s-eye perspective. 
T his perspective should be the determining 
factor in the selection of the final site. 
Further than this, there should be one mas¬ 
ter mind who originates the whole and con¬ 
trols the execution of the garden to its very 
finish. In this way the result will be 
homogeneous, in which there will be a logi¬ 
cal sequence in plan, site and environment. 
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