THE TECHNICS OF GARDENING--(_continued._)
"I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed that she can bring
forth nothing worth her former years. She is always the same, like
herself; and when she collects her strength is abler still. Men are
decayed, and studies; she is not."--BEN JONSON.
The old-fashioned country house has, almost invariably, a garden that
curtseys to the house, with its formal lines, its terraces, and beds of
geometrical patterns.
But to the ordinary Landscape-gardener the terrace is as much anathema
as the "Kist o' Whistles" to the Scotch Puritan! So able and
distinguished a gardener as Mr Robinson, while not absolutely forbidding
any architectural accessories or geometrical arrangement, is for ever
girding at them. The worst thing that can be done with a true garden, he
says ("The English Flower Garden," p. ii), "is to introduce any feature
which, unlike the materials of our world-designer, never changes. There
are positions, it is true, where the _intrusion of architecture_ and
embankment into the garden is justifiable; nay, now and then, even
necessary."
If one is to promulgate opinions that shall run counter to the wisdom of
the whole civilised world, it is, of course, well that they should be
pronounced with the air of a Moses freshly come down from the Mount,
with the tables of the law in his hands. And there is more of it. "There
is no code of taste resting on any solid foundation which proves that
garden or park should have any extensive stonework or geometrical
arrangement.... Let us, then, use as few oil-cloth or carpet patterns
and as little stonework as possible in our gardens. The style is in
doubtful taste in climates and positions more suited to it than that of
England, but he who would adopt it in the present day is an enemy to
every true interest of the garden" (p. vi).
So much for the "deadly formalism" of an old-fashioned garden in our
author's eyes! But, as Horace Walpole might say, "it is not peculiar to
Mr Robinson to think in that manner." It is the way of the
landscape-gardener to monopolise to himself all the right principles of
gardening; he is the angel of the garden who protects its true
interests; all other moods than his are low, all figures other than his
are symbols of errors, all dealings with Nature or with "the materials
of our world-designer" other than his are spurious. For the colonies I
can imagine no fitter doctrines than our author's, but not for an old
land like ours, and for methods that have the approval of men like
Bacon, Temple, More, Evelyn, Sir Joshua, Sir Walter, Elia, Wordsworth,
Tennyson, Morris, and Jefferies. And, even in the colonies, they might
demand to see "the code of taste resting on any solid foundation which
proves" that you shall have any garden or park at all!
"If I am to have a system at all," says the author of "The Flower
Garden" (Murray, 1852), whose broad-minded views declare him to be an
amateur, "give me the good old system of terraces and angled walks, the
clipt yew hedges, against whose dark and rich verdure the bright
old-fashioned flowers glittered in the sun." Or again: "Of all the vain
assumptions of these coxcombical times, that which arrogates the
pre-eminence in the true science of gardening is the vainest.... The
real beauty and poetry of a garden are lost in our efforts after rarity.
If we review the various styles that have prevailed in England from the
knotted gardens of Elizabeth ... to the landscape fashion of the present
day, we shall have little reason to pride ourselves on the advance which
national taste has made upon the earliest efforts in this department"
("The Praise of Gardens," p. 270).
"Large or small," says Mr W. Morris, "the garden should look both
orderly and rich. It should be well fenced from the outer world. It
should by no means imitate either the wilfulness or the wildness of
Nature, but should look like a thing never seen except near a house"
("Hopes and Fears").
The whole point of the matter is, however, perhaps best summed up in
Hazlitt's remark, that there is a pleasure in Art which none but artists
feel. And why this sudden respect for "the materials of our
world-designer," when we may ask in Repton's words "why this art has
been called Landscape-gardening, perhaps he who gave the title may
explain. I see no reason, unless it be the efficacy which it has shown
in destroying landscapes, in which indeed it is infallible!" But,
setting aside the transparent shallowness of such a plea against the use
of Art in a garden, it argues little for the scheme of effects to leave
"nothing to impede the view of the house or its windows but a refreshing
carpet of grass." To pitch your house down upon the grass with no
architectural accessories about it, to link it to the soil, is to
vulgarise it, to rob it of importance, to give it the look of a pastoral
farm, green to the door-step. To bring Nature up to the windows of your
house, with a scorn of art-sweetness, is not only to betray your own
deadness to form, but to cause a sense of unexpected blankness in the
visitor's mind on leaving the well-appointed interior of an English
home. As the house is an Art-production, so is the garden that surrounds
it, and there is no code of taste that I know of which would prove that
Art is more reprehensible in the garden than in the house.
But to return. The old-fashioned country house had its terraces. These
terraces are not mere narrow slopes of turf, such as now-a-days too
often answer to the term, but they are of solid masonry with balustrades
or open-work that give an agreeable variety of light and shade, and
impart an air of importance and of altitude to the house that would be
lacking if the terrace were not there.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ROSERY, WITH SUNDIAL.]
The whole of the ground upon which the house stands, or which forms
its base, constitutes the terrace. In such cases the terrace-walls are
usually in two or more levels, the upper terrace being mostly parallel
with the line of the house, or bowed out at intervals with balconies,
while the lower terrace, or terraces, serve as the varying levels of
formal gardens, pleasure-grounds, labyrinths, &c. The terraces are
approached by wide steps that are treated in a stately and impressive
manner. The walls and balustrades, moreover, conform, as they should, to
the materials employed in the house; if the house be of stone, as at
Haddon, or Brympton, or Claverton, the balustrade is of stone; if the
house be of brick, as at Hatfield or Bramshill, the walls and
balustrades will be of brick and terra-cotta. The advantage of this
agreement of material is obvious, for house and terrace, embraced at one
glance, make a consistent whole. There is not, of course, the same
necessity for consistency of material in the case of the mere retaining
walls.
As one must needs have a system in planning grounds, there is none that
will more certainly bring honour and effect to them than the regular
geometrical treatment. This is what the architect naturally prefers. The
house is his child, and he knows what is good for it. Unlike the
imported gardener, who comes upon the scene as a foreign agent, the
architect works from the house outwards, taking the house as his centre;
the other works from the outside inwards, if he thinks of the "inwards"
at all. The first thinks of house and grounds as a whole which shall
embrace the main buildings, the outbuildings, the flower and
kitchen-gardens, terraces, walls, forecourt, winter-garden,
conservatory, fountain, steps, &c. The other makes the house common to
the commonplace; owing no allegiance to Art, a specialist of one idea,
he holds that the worst thing that can be done is to intrude
architectural or geometrical arrangement about a garden, and speaks of a
refreshing carpet of grass as preferable.
As to the extent, number, and situation of terraces, this point is
determined by the conditions of the house and site. Terraces come
naturally if the house be on an eminence, but even in cases where the
ground recedes only to a slight extent, the surface of a second terrace
may be lowered by increasing the fall of the slope till sufficient earth
is provided for the requisite filling. The surplus earth dug out in
forming the foundations and cellars of the house, or rubbish from an old
building, will help to make up the terrace levels and save the cost of
wheeling and carting the rubbish away.
Like all embankments, terrace walls are built with "battered" fronts or
outward slope; the back of the wall will be left rough, and well
drained. A backing of sods, Mr Milner says, will prevent thrust, and
admit of a lessened thickness in the wall. The walls should not be less
than three feet in height from the ground-level beneath, exclusive of
the balustrade, which is another three feet high.
[Illustration: PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER GARDEN.]
The length of the terrace adds importance to the house, and in small
gardens, where the kitchen-garden occupies one side of the
flower-garden, the terrace may with advantage be carried to the full
extent of the ground, and the kitchen-garden separated by a hedge and
shrubs; and at the upper end of the kitchen-garden may be a narrow
garden, geometrical, rock, or other garden, set next the terrace wall.
The treatment of the upper terrace should be strictly architectural. If
the terrace be wide, raised beds with stone edging, set on the inner
side of the terrace, say alternately long beds with dwarf flowering
shrubs or hydrangeas, and circles with standard hollies, or marble
statues on pedestals, that shall alternate with pyramidal golden yews,
have a good effect, the terrace terminating with an arbour or stone
Pavilion. Modern taste, however, even if it condescend so far as to
allow of a terrace, is content with its grass plot and gravel walks,
which is not carrying Art very far.
Laneham tells of the old pleasaunce at Kenilworth, that it had a terrace
10 ft. high and 12 ft. wide on the garden side, in which were set at
intervals obelisks and spheres and white bears, "all of stone, upon
their curious bases," and at each end an arbour; the garden-plot was
below this, and had its fair alleys, or grass, or gravel.
The lower terrace may well be twice the width of the upper one, and may
be a geometrical garden laid out on turf, if preferred, but far better
upon gravel. Here will be collected the choicest flowers in the garden,
giving a mass of rich colouring.
Although in old gardens the lower terrace is some 10 ft. below the upper
one, this is too deep to suit modern taste; indeed, 5 ft. or 6 ft. will
give a better view of the garden if it is to be viewed from the house.
At the same time it is undeniable that the more you are able to look
_down_ upon the garden--the higher you stand above its plane--the better
the effect; the lower you stand, the poorer the perspective.
Modern taste, also, will not always tolerate a balustraded wall as a
boundary to the terrace, but likes a grass slope. If this poor
substitute be preferred, there should be a level space at the bottom of
the slope and at the top; the slope should have a continuous line, and
not follow any irregularity in the natural lie of the ground, and there
should be a simple plinth 12 to 18 in. high at the bottom of the slope.
But the mere grass slope does not much help the effect of the house, far
or near; a house standing on a grass slope always has the effect of
sliding down a hill. To leave the house exposed upon the landscape,
unscreened and unterraced, is not to treat site or house fairly. There
exists a certain necessity for features in a flat place, and if no
raised terrace be possible, it is desirable to get architectural
treatment by means of balustrades alone, without much, or any, fall in
the ground. The eye always asks for definite boundaries to a piece of
ornamental ground as it does for a frame to a picture, and where
definite boundaries do not exist, the distant effect is that of a
house that has tumbled casually down from the skies, near which the
cattle may graze as they list, and the flower-beds are the mere sport of
contingencies.
[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF THE PLEASAUNCE, VILLA ALBANI, ROME.]
Good examples of terrace walls are to be found at Haddon, Claverton,
Brympton, Montacute, Bramshill, Wilton, and Blickling Hall. If truth be
told, however, all our English examples dwindle into nothingness by the
side of fine Italian examples like those at Villa Albani,[43] Villa
Medici, or Villa Borghese, with their grand scope and array of
sculpture. (See illustration from Percier and Fontaine's "_Choix des
plus celebres maisons de plaisance de Rome et de ses environs_." Paris,
MDCCCIV.)
[Footnote 43: See accompanying plans.]
The arrangement of steps is a matter that may call forth a man's utmost
ingenuity. The scope and variety of step arrangement is, indeed, a
matter that can only be realised by designers who have given it their
study. As to practical points. In planning steps make the treads wide,
the risers low. Long flights without landings are always objectionable.
Some of the best examples, both in England and abroad, have winders; as
to the library quadrangle, Trinity Coll., Cambridge; Donibristle Castle,
Scotland; Villa d'Este, Tivoli; the gardens at Nimes. The grandest
specimen of all is the Trinita di Monte steps in Rome (see Notes on
Gardens in _The British Architect_, by John Belcher and Mervyn
Macartney).
It is impossible to lay down rules of equal application everywhere as to
the distribution of garden area into compartments, borders, terraces,
walks, &c. These matters are partly regulated by the character of the
house, its situation, the section and outline of the ground. But gardens
should, if possible, lie towards the best parts of the house, or towards
the rooms most commonly in use by the family, and endeavour should be
made to plant them so that to step from the house on to the terrace, or
from the terrace to the various parts of the garden, should only seem
like going from one room to another.
Of the arrangement of the ground into divisions, each section should
have its own special attractiveness and should be led up to by some
inviting artifice of archway, or screened alley of shrubs, or "rosery"
with its trellis-work, or stone colonnade; and if the alley be long it
should be high enough to afford shade from the glare of the sun in hot
weather; you ought not, as Bacon pertinently says, to "buy the shade by
going into the sun."
Again, the useful and the beautiful should be happily united, the
kitchen and the flower garden, the way to the stables and outbuildings,
the orchard, the winter garden, &c., all having a share of consideration
and a sense of connectedness; and if there be a chance for a filbert
walk, seize it; that at Hatfield is charming. "I cannot understand,"
says Richard Jefferies ("Wild Life in a Southern Country," p. 70), "why
filbert walks are not planted by our modern capitalists, who make
nothing of spending a thousand pounds in forcing-houses."
A garden should be well fenced, and there should always be facility for
getting real seclusion, so much needed now-a-days; indeed, the provision
of places of retreat has always been a note of an English garden. The
love of retirement, almost as much as a taste for trees and flowers, has
dictated its shapes. Hence the cedar-walks,[44] the bower, the avenue,
the maze, the alley, the wilderness, that were familiar, and almost the
invariable features of an old English pleasaunce, "hidden happily and
shielded safe."
[Footnote 44: One of the finest and weirdest cedar-walks that I have
ever met with is that at Marwell, near Owslebury in Hampshire. Here you
realise the wizardry of green gloom and sense of perfect seclusion. It
was here that Henry VIII. courted one of his too willing wives.]
This seclusion can be got by judicious screening of parts, by
shrubberies, or avenues of hazel, or yew, or sweet-scented bay, with
perhaps clusters of lilies and hollyhocks, or dwarf Alpine plants and
trailers between. And in all this the true gardener will have a thought
for the birds. "No modern exotic evergreens," says Jefferies, "ever
attract our English birds like the true old English trees and shrubs. In
the box and yew they love to build; spindly laurels and rhododendrons,
with vacant draughty spaces underneath, they detest, avoiding them as
much as possible. The common hawthorn hedge round a country garden shall
contain three times as many nests, and be visited by five times as many
birds as the foreign evergreens, so costly to rear and so sure to be
killed by the first old-fashioned frost."
Another chance for getting seclusion is the high walls or lofty yew
hedge of the quadrangular courtyard, which may be near the entrance.
Such a forecourt is the place for a walk on bleak days; in its borders
you are sure of the earliest spring flowers, for the tender flowers can
here bloom securely, the myrtle, the pomegranate will flourish, and the
most fragrant plants and climbers hang over the door and windows. What
is more charming than the effect of hollyhocks, peonies, poppies,
tritomas, and tulips seen against a yew hedge?
The paths should be wide and excellently made. The English have always
had good paths; as Mr Evelyn said to Mr Pepys, "We have the best walks
of gravell in the world, France having none, nor Italy." The comfort and
the elegance of a garden depend in no slight degree upon good gravel
walks, but having secured gravel walks to all parts of the grounds,
green alleys should also be provided. Nothing is prettier than a vista
through the smooth-shaven green alley, with a statue or sundial or
pavilion at the end; or an archway framing a peep of the country beyond.
As to the garden's size, it is erroneous to suppose that the enjoyments
of a garden are only in proportion to its magnitude; the pleasurableness
of a garden depends infinitely more upon the degree of its culture and
the loving care that is bestowed upon it. If gardens were smaller than
they usually are, there would be a better chance of their orderly
keeping. As it is, gardens are mostly too large for the number of
attendants, so that the time and care of the gardener are nearly
absorbed in the manual labour of repairing and stocking the beds, and
maintaining and sweeping the walks.
[Illustration: PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN, YEW WALK,
AND TENNIS COURT.]
But if not large, the grounds should not have the appearance of being
confined within a limited space; and Art is well spent in giving an
effect of greater extent to the place than it really possesses by a
suitable composition of the walks, bushes, and trees. These lines should
lead the eye to the distance, and if bounded by trees, the garden should
be connected with the outer world by judicious openings; and this rule
applies to gardens large or small.
Ground possessing a gentle inclination towards the south is desirable
for a garden. On such a slope effectual drainage is easily accomplished,
and the greatest possible benefit obtained from the sun's rays. The
garden should, if possible, have an open exposure towards the east and
west, so that it may enjoy the full benefit of morning and evening sun;
but shelter on the north or north-east, or any side in which the
particular locality may happen to be exposed, is desirable.
The dimensions of the garden will be proportionate to the scale of the
house. The general size of the garden to a good-sized house is from four
to six acres, but the extent varies in many places from twelve to
twenty, or even thirty acres. (See an admirable article on gardening in
the "Encyclopaedia.")
Before commencing to lay out a garden the plan should be prepared in
minute detail, and every point carefully considered. Two or three acres
of kitchen garden, enclosed by walls and surrounded by slips, will
suffice for the supply of a moderate establishment.[45] The form of the
kitchen garden advocated by the writer in the "Encyclopaedia" is that of
a square, or oblong, not curvilinear, since the work of cropping of the
ground can thus be more easily carried out. On the whole, the best form
is that of a parallelogram, with its longest sides in the proportion of
about five to three of the shorter, and running east and west. The whole
should be compactly arranged so as to facilitate working, and to afford
convenient access for the carting of heavy materials to the store-yards,
etc.
[Footnote 45: As the walls afford valuable space for the growth of the
choicer kinds of hardy fruits, the direction in which they are built is
of considerable importance. "In the warmer parts of the country, the
wall on the north side of the garden should be so placed as to face the
sun at about an hour before noon, or a little to east of south; in less
favoured localities it should be made to face direct south, and in the
still more unfavourable districts it should face the sun an hour after
noon, or a little west of south. The east and west walls should run
parallel to each other, and at right angles to that on the north side."]
There can, as we have said, be no fixed or uniform arrangement of
gardens. Some grounds will have more flower-beds than others, some more
park or wilderness; some will have terraces, some not; some a pinetum,
or an American garden. In some gardens the terraces will lie immediately
below the main front of the house, in others not, because the
geometrical garden needs a more sheltered site where the flowers can
thrive.
[Illustration: PLAN OF SUNK FLOWER GARDEN AND YEW HEDGES.]
Of the shapes of the beds it were of little avail to speak, and the
diagrams here given are only of use where the conditions of the ground
properly admit of their application. The geometrical garden is capable
of great variety of handling. A fair size for a geometrical garden is
120 ft. by 60 ft. This size will allow of a main central walk of seven
feet that shall divide the panel into two equal parts and lead down to
the next level. The space may have a balustrade along its length on the
two sides, and on the garden side of the balustrade a flower-bed of
mixed flowers and choice low-growing shrubs, backed with hollyhocks,
tritoma, lilies, golden-rod, etc. The width of the border will
correspond with the space required for the steps that descend from the
upper terrace. For obtaining pleasant proportions in the design, the
walks in the garden will be of two sizes, gravelled like the rest--the
wider walk, say, three feet, the smaller, one foot nine inches. The
centre of the garden device on each side may be a raised bed with a
stone kerb and an ornamental shrub in the middle, and the space around
with, say, periwinkle or stonecrop, mixed with white harebells, or low
creepers. Or, should there be no wide main walk, and the garden-plot be
treated as one composition, the central bed will have a statue, sundial,
fountain, or other architectural feature. Each bed will be edged with
box or chamfered stone, or terra-cotta edging. Or the formal garden may
be sunk below the level of the paths, and filled either with flowers or
with dwarf coniferae.
Both for practical and artistic reasons, the beds should not be too
small; they should not be so small that, when filled with plants, they
should appear like spots of colour, nor be so large that any part of
them cannot be easily reached by a rake. Nor should the shapes of the
beds be too angular to accommodate the plants well. In Sir Gardner
Wilkinson's book on "Colour" (Murray, 1858, p. 372), he speaks of design
and good form as the very _soul_ of a dressed garden; and the very
permanence of the forms, which remain though successive series of plants
be removed, calls for a good design. The shapes of the beds, as well as
the colours of their contents, are taken cognisance of in estimating the
general effect of a geometrical garden. This same accomplished author
advises that there should always be a less formal garden beyond the
geometrical one; the latter is, so to speak, an appurtenance of the
house, a feature of the plateau upon which it stands, and no attempt
should be made to combine the patterns of the geometrical with the beds
or borders of the outer informal garden, such combination being
specially ill-judged in the neighbourhood of bushes and winding paths.
Of the proper selection of flowers and the determination of the colours
for harmonious combination in the geometrical beds, much that is
contradictory has been preached, one gardener leaning to more formality
than another. There is, however, a general agreement upon the necessity
of having beds that will look fairly well at all seasons of the year,
and an agreement as to the use of hardy flowers in these beds. Mr
Robinson has some good advice to give upon this point ("English Flower
Garden," p. 24): "The ugliest and most needless parterre (!) in England
may be planted in the most beautiful way with hardy flowers alone." (Why
"needless," then?) "Are we not all wrong in adopting one degree, so to
say, of plant life as the only fitting one to lay before the house? Is
it well to devote the flower-bed to one type of vegetation only--low
herbaceous vegetation--be that hardy or tender?... We have been so long
accustomed to leave flower-beds raw, and to put a number of plants out
every year, forming flat surfaces of colour, that no one even thinks of
the higher and better way of filling them. But surely it is worth
considering whether it would not be right to fill the beds permanently,
rather than to leave them in this naked or flat condition throughout the
whole of the year.... If any place asks for permanent planting, it is
the spot of ground immediately near the house; for no one can wish to
see large, grave-like masses of soil frequently dug and disturbed near
the windows, and few care for the result of all this, even when the
ground is well covered during a good season." Again our author, on p.
95, states that "he has very decided notions as to arrangement of the
various colours for summer bedding, which are that the whole shall be so
commingled that one would be puzzled to determine what tint predominates
in the entire arrangement." He would have a "glaucous" colour, that is,
a light grey or whitish green. Such a colour never tires the eye, and
harmonises with the tints of the landscape, "particularly of the lawn."
This seems to be neutralising the effects of the flowers, and this
primal consideration of the lawn is like scorning your picture for the
sake of its frame!
Sir Gardner Wilkinson, who writes of gardens from quite another point of
view, says: "It is by no means necessary or advisable to select rare
flowers for the beds, and some of the most common are the most eligible,
being more hardy, and therefore less likely to fail, or to cover the bed
with a scanty and imperfect display of colour. Indeed, it is a common
mistake to seek rare flowers, when many of the old and most ordinary
varieties are far more beautiful. The point to note in this matter of
choosing flowers for a geometrical garden is to ascertain first the
lines that will best accord with the design, and make for a harmonious
and brilliant effect, and to see that the flowers best suited to it
blossom at the same periods. A succession of those of the same colour
may be made to take the place of each, and continue the design at
successive seasons. They should also be, as near as possible, of the
same height as their companions, so that the blue flowers be not over
tall in one bed, or the red too short in another.... Common flowers, the
weeds of the country, are often most beautiful in colour, and are not to
be despised because they are common; they have also the advantage of
being hardy, and rare flowers are not always those best suited for
beds" (Wilkinson on "Colour," p. 375).
With regard to the ornamental turf-beds of our modern gardens. To judge
of a garden upon high principles, we expect it to be the finest and
fittest expression that a given plot of ground will take; it must be the
perfect adaptation of means to an end and that end is beauty. Are we to
suppose, then, that the turf-beds of strange device that we meet with in
modern gardens are the best that can be done by the heir of all the ages
in the way of garden-craft? A garden, I am aware, has other things to
attend to besides the demands of ideal beauty; it has to embellish life
to supply innocent pleasure to the inmates of the house as well as to
dignify the house itself; and the devising of these vagrant beds that
sprawl about the grounds is a pleasure that can be ill spared from the
artistic delights of a modern householder. It is indeed wonderful to
what heights the British fancy can rise when put to the push, if only it
have a congenial field! So here we have flower-beds shaped as crescents
and kidneys--beds like flying bats or bubbling tadpoles, commingled
butterflies and leeches, stars and sausages, hearts and commas,
monograms and maggots--a motley assortment to be sure--but the modern
mind is motley, and the pretty flowers smile a sickly smile out of their
comic beds, as though Paradise itself could provide them with no fairer
lodgings!
And yet if I dare speak my mind "sike fancies weren foolerie;" and it
were hard to find a good word to say for them from any point of view
whatever. Their wobbly shapes are not elegant; they have not the
sanction of precedent, even of epochs the most barbarous. And though
they make pretence at being a species of art, their mock-formality has
not that geometric precision which shall bind them to the formal lines
of the house, or to the general bearings of the site. Not only do they
contribute nothing to the artistic effect of the general design, but
they even mar the appearance of the grass that accommodates them. Design
they have, but not design of that quality which alone justifies its
intrusion. No wonder "Nature abhors lines" if this base and spurious
imitation of the "old formality," that Charles Lamb gloats over, is all
that the landscape-garden can offer in the way of idealisation.
One other feature of the old-fashioned garden--the herbaceous
border--requires a word. It is worthy of note that, unlike the modern,
the ancient gardener was not a man of one idea--his art is not bounded
like a barrel-organ that can only play one invariable tune! While the
master of the "old formality" can give intricate harmonies of inwoven
colours in the geometric beds--"all mosaic, choicely planned," where
Nature lends her utmost magic to grace man's fancy--he knows the value
of the less as well as the more, and finds equal room for the
unconstrained melodies of odd free growths in the border-beds, where you
shall enjoy the individual character, the form, the outline, the colour,
the tone of each plant. Here let the mind of an earlier generation
speak in George Milner's "Country Pleasures":
"By this time I have got round to the old English flower-bed, where
only perennials with an ancient ancestry are allowed to grow. Here
there is always delight; and I should be sorry to exchange its
sweet flowers for any number of cartloads of scentless
bedding-plants, mechanically arranged and ribbon-bordered. This bed
is from fifty to sixty yards long, and three or four yards in
width. A thorn hedge divides it from the orchard. In spring the
apple-bloom hangs over, and now we see in the background the apples
themselves. The plants still in flower are the dark blue monkshood,
which is 7ft. high; the spiked veronica; the meadow-sweet or
queen-o'-the-meadow; the lady's mantle, and the evening primrose.
This last may be regarded as the characteristic plant of the
season. The flowers open about seven o'clock, and as the twilight
deepens, they gleam like pale lamps, and harmonise wonderfully with
the colour of the sky. _On this bed I read the history of the
year._ Here were the first snowdrops; here came the crocuses, the
daffodils, the blue gentians, the columbines, the great globed
peonies; and last, the lilies and the roses."
And now to apply what has been said.
Since gardening entails so much study and experience--since it is a
craft in which one is so apt to err, in small matters as in large--since
it exists to represent passages of Nature that have touched man's
imagination from time immemorial--since its business is to paint living
pictures of living things whose habits, aspects, qualities, and
character have ever engaged man's interest--since the modern gardener
has not only not found new sources of inspiration unknown of old, but
has even lost sensibility to some that were active then--it were surely
wise to take the hand of old garden-masters who did large things in a
larger past--to whom fine gardening came as second nature--whose success
has given English garden-craft repute which not even the journeyman
efforts of modern times can quite extinguish.
These men--Bacon, Temple, Evelyn, and their school--let us follow for
style, elevated form, noble ideals, and artistic interpretation of
Nature.
For practical knowledge of trees and shrubs, indigenous or exotic--to
know _how_ to plant and _what_ to plant--to know what to avoid in the
practice of modern blunderers--to know the true theory and practice of
Landscape-gardening, reduced to writing, after ample analysis--turn we
to those books of solid value of the three great luminaries of modern
garden-craft, Gilpin, Repton, Loudon.
And it were not only to be ungenerous, but absolutely foolish, to
neglect the study of the best that is now written and done in the way of
landscape-gardening, in methods of planting, and illustration of botany
up to date. One school may see things from a different point of view to
another, yet is there but one art of gardening. It is certain that to
gain boldness in practice, to have clear views upon that delicate
point--the relations of Art and Nature--to have a reliable standard of
excellence, we must know and value the good in the garden-craft of all
times, we must sympathise with the point of view of each phase, and
follow that which is good in each and all without scruple and
doubtfulness. That man is a fool who thinks that he can escape the
influence of his day, or that he can dispense with tradition.
I say, let us follow the old garden-masters for style, form, ideal, and
artistic interpretation of Nature, and let us not say what Horace
Walpole whimpered forth of Temple's garden-enterprise: "These are
adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands." Have we not
seen that at the close of Bacon's lessons in grand gardening he adds,
that the things thrown in "for state and magnificence" are but nothing
to the true pleasure of a garden?
The counsels of perfection are not to be slighted because our ground is
small. In gardening, as in other matters, the true test of one's work is
the measure of one's possibilities. A small, trim garden, like a sonnet,
may contain the very soul of beauty. A small garden may be as truly
admirable as a perfect song or painting.
Let it be our aim, then, to give to gardening all the method and
distinctness of which it is capable, and admit no impediments. A garden
not fifty yards square, deftly handled, judiciously laid out, its beds
and walks suitably directed, will yield thrice the opportunity for
craft, thrice the scope for imaginative endeavour that a two-acre
"garden" of the pastoral-farm order, such as is recommended of the
faculty, will yield. The very division of the ground into proportionate
parts, the varied levels obtained, the framed vistas, the fitting
architectural adjuncts, will alone contribute an air of size and scale.
As to "codes of taste" (which are usually in matters of Art only
someone's opinions stated pompously), these should not be allowed to
baulk individual enterprise. "Long experience," says that accomplished
gardener and charming writer, E. V. B., in "Days and Hours in a Garden"
(p. 125), "Long experience has taught me to have nothing to do with
principles in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy
with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for
'Art in a Garden.' If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally
enough." Or to put this thought in Temple's words, "The success is
wholly in the gardener."
If a garden grow flowers in abundance, _there_ is success, and one may
proceed to frame a garden after approved "codes of taste" and fail in
this, or one may prefer unaccepted methods and find success beyond one's
fondest dreams. "All is fine that is fit" is a good garden motto; and
what an eclectic principle is this! How many kinds of style it allows,
justifies, and guards! the simplest way or the most ornate; the fanciful
or the sweet austere; the intricate and complex, or the coy and
unconstrained. Take it as true as Gospel that there is danger in the use
of ornament--danger of excess--take it as equally true that there is an
intrinsic and superior value in moderation, and yet the born gardener
shall find more paths, old and new, that lead to Beauty in a plot of
garden-ground than the modern stylist dreams of.
The art of gardening may now be known of all men. Gardening is no longer
a merely princely diversion requiring thirty wide acres for its display.
Everyone who can, now lives in the country, where he is bound to have a
garden; and I repeat what I said before, let no one suppose that the
beauty of a garden depends on its acreage, or on the amount of money
spent upon it. Nay, one would almost prefer a small garden plot, so as
to ensure that ample justice shall be done to it.[46] In a small garden
there is less fear of dissipated effort, more chance of making friends
with its inmates, more time to spare to heighten the beauty of its
effects.
[Footnote 46: "Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but
roses, and nobody would desire the interference of another
plant."--LEIGH HUNT.]
To some extent the success of a garden depends upon favourable
conditions of sun, soil, and water, but more upon the choiceness of its
contents, the skill of its planting, the lovingness of its tendence.
Love for beauty has a way of enticing beauty; the seeing eye wins its
own ranges of vision, finds points of vantage in unlikely ground. "I
write in a nook," says the poet Cowper, "that I call my boudoir; it is a
summerhouse, not bigger than a sedan-chair; the door of it opens into
the garden that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles, _and
the window into my neighbour's orchard_. It formerly served an
apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, however, it is dedicated to
sublimer uses." What a mastery of life is here!
"As if life's business were a summer mood;
As if all needful things would come unsought
To genial faith, still rich in genial good;
* * * * *
By our own spirits are we deified."
But I must not finish the stanza in this connection.
A garden is pre-eminently a place to indulge individual taste. "Let us
not be that fictitious thing," says Madame Roland, "that can only exist
by the help of others--_soyons nous_!" So, regardless of the doctors,
let me say that the best general rule that I can devise for
garden-making is: put all the beauty and delightsomeness you can into
your garden, get all the beauty and delight you can out of your garden,
never minding a little mad want of balance, and think of proprieties
afterwards! Of course, this is to "prove naething," but never mind if
but the garden enshrine beauty. To say this is by no means to allow that
the garden is the fit place for indulging your love of the
out-of-the-way; not so, yet a little sign of fresh motive, a touch of
individual technique, a token, however shyly displayed, that you think
for yourself is welcome in a garden. Thus I know of a gardener who
turned a section of his grounds into a sort of huge bear-pit, not a
sunk-pit, but a mound that took the refuse soil from the site of his new
house hollowed out, and its slopes set all round with Alpine and
American garden-plants, each variety finding the aspect it likes best,
and the proportion of light and shade that suits its constitution. This
is, of course, to "intrude embankments" into a garden with a vengeance,
yet even Mr Robinson, if he saw it, would allow that, as in love and
war, your daring in gardening is justified by its results, where, as
George Herbert has it--
"Who shuts his hand, hath lost its gold;
Who opens it, hath it twice told."
A garden is, first and last, a place for flowers; but, treading in the
old master's footsteps, I would devote a certain part of even a small
garden to Nature's own wild self, and the loveliness of weed-life. Here
Art should only give things a good start and help the propagation of
some sorts of plants not indigenous to the locality. Good effects do not
ensue all at once, but stand aside and wait, or help judiciously, and
the result will be a picture of rude and vigorous life, of pretty colour
and glorious form, that is gratifying for its own qualities, and more
for its opposition to the peacefulness of the garden's ordered
surroundings.
A garden is the place for flowers, a place where one may foster a
passion for loveliness, may learn the magic of colour and the glory of
form, and quicken sympathy with Nature in her higher moods. And, because
the old-fashioned garden more conduces to these ends than the modern, it
has our preference. The spirit of old garden-craft, says: "Do everything
that can be done to help Nature, to lift things to perfection, to
interpret, to give to your Art method and distinctness." The spirit of
the modern garden-craft of the purely landscape school says: "Let be,
let well alone, or extemporise at most. Brag of your scorn for Art, yet
smuggle her in, as a stalking-horse for your halting method and
non-geometrical forms."
And, as we have shown, Art has her revenges as well as Nature; and the
very negativeness of this school's Art-treatments is the seal to its
doom. Mere neutral teaching can father nothing; it can never breed a
system of stable device that is capable of development. But old
garden-craft is positive, where the other is negative; it has no
niggling scruples, but clear aims, that admit of no impediment except
the unwritten laws of good taste. Hence its permanent value as a
standard of device--for every gardener must needs desire the support of
some backbone of experience to stiffen his personal efforts--he must
needs have some basis of form on which to rest his own device, his own
realisations of natural beauty--and what safer, stabler system of
garden-craft can he wish for than that of the old English garden--itself
the outcome of a spacious age, well skilled in the pictorial art and
bent upon perfection?
The qualities to aim at in a flower-garden are beauty, animation,
variety, mystery. A garden's beauty, like a woman's beauty, is measured
by its capacity for taking fine dress. Given a fine garden, and we need
not fear to use embellishment or strong colour, or striking device,
according to the adage "The richly provided richly require."
[Illustration: (PERSPECTIVE VIEW).
PLAN SHEWING ARRANGEMENT OF FOUNTAIN, YEW WALK, AND FLOWER BEDS FOR A
LARGE GARDEN.]
Because Art stands, so to speak, sponsor for the grace of a garden,
because all gardening is Art or nothing, we need not fear to overdo Art
in a garden, nor need we fear to make avowal of the secret of its charm.
I have no more scruple in using the scissors upon tree or shrub, where
trimness is desirable, than I have in mowing the turf of the lawn that
once represented a virgin world. There is a quaint charm in the results
of the topiary art, in the prim imagery of evergreens, that all
ages have felt. And I would even introduce _bizarreries_ on the
principle of not leaving all that is wild and odd to Nature outside of
the garden-paling; and in the formal part of the garden my yews should
take the shape of pyramids or peacocks or cocked hats or ramping lions
in Lincoln-green, or any other conceit I had a mind to, which vegetable
sculpture can take.
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF GARDEN IN PLAN FOLLOWING.]
As to the other desirable qualities--animation, variety, mystery--I
would base my garden upon the model of the old masters, without adopting
any special style. The place should be a home of fancy, full of
intention, full of pains (without showing any); half common-sense, half
romance; "neither praise nor poetry, but something better than either,"
as Burke said of Sheridan's speech; it should have an ethereal touch,
yet be not inappropriate for the joyous racket and country cordiality of
an English home. It should be
"A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ'd up and closed in little"--
something that would challenge the admiration and suit the moods of
various minds; be brimful of colour-gladness, yet be not all pyramids of
sweets, but offer some solids for the solid man; combining old processes
and new, old idealisms and new realisms; the monumental style of the old
here, the happy-go-lucky shamblings of the modern there; the page of
Bacon or Temple here, the page of Repton or Marnock there. At every turn
the imagination should get a fresh stimulus to surprise; we should be
led on from one fair sight, one attractive picture, to another; not
suddenly, nor without some preparation of heightened expectancy, but as
in a fantasy, and with something of the quick alternations of a dream.
[Illustration: PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF A DESIGN FOR A GARDEN, WITH CLIPPED
YEW HEDGES AND FLOWER BEDS.]
Your garden, gentle reader, is perchance not yet made. It were indeed
happiness if, when good things betide you, and the time is ripe for your
enterprise, Art
... "Shall say to thee
I find you worthy, do this thing for me."