Notes and Reviews 
I N “American Gardens the art of formal 
gardening as practiced in America obtains, 
for the first time, an adequate pictorial ex¬ 
pression. The collection of photographs 
which the book presents is representative of 
all that is best, especially among the more 
recent works. Although a number of gardens 
of the eighteenth century have been in¬ 
cluded, one feels that there must be many 
others fully as interesting that have escaped 
the attention of the editors, but of new 
gardens treated in a more less architectural 
way the book offers an endless variety. 
Granting then that we have before us a 
representative collection of America n 
gardens, it may be worth our while to enquire 
how it stands with the art of garden design 
among us nowadays. Certain it is that the 
renaissance of the formal garden is in full 
swing, “ no home happy and no back yard 
complete without its pergola.” But have 
we not something too much of pergole and 
hermae and exedrae? Have we not in place 
of developing the modest formal garden of 
our ancestors, a garden that spoke less of 
its European origin than of its American 
environment, have we not rather created the 
garden of the architect’s sketch-book and the 
amateur’s photograph, a garden at its best 
pleasantly reminiscent of its foreign sources 
and at its worst boisterously assertive of 
them? Have we assimilated what we have 
so hastily swallowed? Is there as yet any 
distinctly American style in gardens? The 
answer is not far to seek. We have no more 
a style of our own in gardens than we have 
in architecture. And this is all the more 
.remarkable since nature has away of forcing 
individuality upon the gardens of each of 
the nations. When Charles VIII carried 
back to France the inspiration of Italian art, 
that of the garden was not wanting, but from 
the time of Charles VIII to that of Louis 
XVI the art of gardening became more and 
more truly an expression of French life and 
French environment and less and less a 
reminiscence of its Italian origin. The 
English garden is under heavy obligations 
to its Continental neighbors, yet through 
the course of years it has so blended foreign 
i American Gardens, edited by Guy Lowell, 21 pp., 112 plates, 
12 pp. index. Boston, Bates and Guild Company. 1902. Price, 
$7-5°- 
influences with what is native to it that it 
is, as Sedding says, “ the precise thing which 
experience has proved to be most in accord 
with the character and climate of the country, 
and the genius of the race.” Now it is just 
because one earnestly wishes to see in our 
own gardens such an accord with the character 
and climate of the country, and with the 
genius of the race that an examination of 
“American Gardens” leaves with us a note 
of dissatisfaction. Our art is not yet fine 
enough to enable us to speak quite in our 
own words, we must be dragging in here a 
scrap of French, there a whole sentence of 
Italian. 
But to the book itself. It consists of 
many good photographs, well reproduced. 
They are followed by an index of singular 
value containing sketch-plans of nearly all of 
the more interesting gardens illustrated in 
the book. These plans make no pretence 
at accuracy of detail, yet they faithfully con¬ 
vey all the more important features. Pre¬ 
ceding the illustrations there is an essay on 
gardening partly historical, chiefly critical, by 
Guy Lowell. It contains much sound wis¬ 
dom, particularly in its insistence upon the 
necessity of so skilfully adapting such details 
as we may borrow from other countries as to 
make them seem at home in our own. With 
but few of Mr. Lowell’s dicta are we pre¬ 
pared to take issue, yet it is hard to remain 
silent on hearing him say, “There can be no 
doubt that, despite the summer charms of 
the formal garden, the natural style appears 
better in our climate in winter, and that 
therefore a formal garden will give its great¬ 
est satisfaction only when it is built in con¬ 
nection with a house that is to be principally 
used in summer.” Our own experience has 
been sharply at variance with this. There 
comes to mind at once a little formal garden 
that in summer is scarcely gayer, scarcely 
more overflowing with flowers than some of 
its informal neighbors. But in winter, when 
their empty beds seem so formless and unin¬ 
teresting, its trim parterre firmly outlined in 
box, its well-kept walks shut in between walls 
of somber bronze green foliage, contrasting 
with the snowy covering of the ground, are a 
perfect assurance that the natural style does 
not, as Mr. Lowell would have us believe, 
appear the better in our climate in winter. 
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