House and Garden 
H 
MAST LANDS AT CORNISH, N. H. 
The Garden of Miss Rose Standish Nichols 
the English garden is in spite of its design, 
and is the haphazard product of the growth 
of varied trees and the fresh smooth greens 
of English grass. 
The American, in the same position as 
the English owner of a country house, has 
evidently ideas of fitness and common sense. 
He no more allows the immediate surround¬ 
ings of his abode to drift into a chance shape, 
than he hands over the arrangement and 
detail of his living-rooms to haphazard. 
Moreover, he does not pitch his dwelling as 
a wigwam in the desert. There is, no doubt, 
in the broad bosom of America sufficient real 
wilderness for his enjoyment, without the 
making up of puny shams, such as English 
gardeners perpetrate under the name 
of “natural” or “wild” gardens. 
Since the American’s house is very 
clearly a civilized product— that 
has come by much learning and 
science, — so is his garden laid out 
frankly for its purpose,and with skill 
and taste in its order and comeliness. 
By the side of the expert of the 
“English Flower Garden,”with his 
books on “rock” and “wild” gar¬ 
dens and other impracticable affec¬ 
tations, the American garden-maker 
shows himself as altogether on a su¬ 
perior standpoint,with a level-head¬ 
ed senseof first conditions of his art. 
But the garden-craft of the United 
States does not, I think,ask 
to be compared with the 
evident failures of our 
sentimentalist gardeners, 
any more than with the 
low standards of our com¬ 
mercial landscapists. There 
are beautiful gardens in 
England, set out on just 
lines, and with the real sense 
of garden-making. They 
are of two kinds. First, the 
genuine old English garden 
here and there survives, 
with lichened walls and 
mossy terraces, with its 
courts and bowling alleys, 
walks and avenues, laby¬ 
rinths and water-ways. Un¬ 
touched by the vulgarities 
of modern gardening, are still to be seen state¬ 
ly yew hedges and the level turf of centuries, 
asleep in the dreamland of ancient courtesy. 
That the American garden should attain this 
quality is impossible—that it should seek to 
do so would be foolishness, for it is the haze 
of a vanished order of things that guilds 
the formalities of Hampton Court and of 
Haddon Hall. 
But there are other beautiful gardens in 
England, the gardens of the last half century 
—those which the Englishman’s love of 
gardening has provided for his country home, 
either when he has been a garden-artist him¬ 
self or when he has taken advantage of the 
thought and design of the real expert, i. e., of 
A FLOWER-BORDERED WALK AT “MASTLANDS 
203 
