International studio (53.1914)

IVhat is a Garden ?

am saying, as in this case it was necessary to
vignette a brick house on to the landscape which is
seen in the distance. That this was done with
a considerable measure of success will be evident
from the illustration, even though it is from a
photograph taken almost immediately after the
garden had been planted and before there had been
any time to obtain proper foliage effects. How the
hard lines of the brick walls were ultimately
softened is shown in the illustration on p. 270,
which is reproduced from my book, “The Art
and Craft of Garden Making.” Much is due of
course to the careful preservation and the incor-
poration into the scheme of the large trees which
existed on the site when I was called in to create
the gardens, and thus we have one form of happy
co-operation helping another, that is, the blend of
the old with the new helping the blend of Art and
Nature.
In this first illustration we have before us the whole
process, for close to us is a terrace purely formal in
treatment, and as the distance from the house
increases, this formality is gradually merged into
the natural scenery so that the whole forms effec-

tively a logically expressed architectural and artistic
composition.
In two of the other illustrations (p. 271) we
have a very different case indeed. Here we have
a garden as wild and as like Nature as anything
could possibly be. The photographs were taken
at Underley Hall and provide a splendid example
of a form of gardening which has always appealed
with particular force to the Englishman in his
great love and reverence for Nature. He feels that
he is working hand in hand with the great force
of which he is such an ardent devotee and is
helping her to express herself to the utmost. As
we have already hinted there is room in almost
every domain for gardens of both kinds, the purely
architectural and the purely natural, and between
these two there is every variety of gradation and
infinite possibility of expression which should
preclude the slightest tendency to repetition or
sameness in the treatment of different sites. And
so we see that, in dealing with a first practical
necessity of garden-making, we come to realise very
largely the motif which should underlie all good
garden design.