Studio: international art (5.1895)

The Garden and its Art

the enclosing privet-hedge duly cut to shape, with
the masses of hollyhocks and sunflowers in rows
against the old red brick of the cottages, made
an ensemble as truly formal as any Mr. Elgood
depicted so charmingly. A sundial served to
emphasize the artificial design of the whole, but
the flowers looked no less beautiful, with the
clipped shrubs as foils to their natural growth, nor
did the mass of colour tell with less force because
it was composed of many a group of blossoms of
the same colour, framed, as it were, in broad bands
of dull-green foliage.

The Art for which we plead, is not necessarily
dependent upon vases, fountains, sundials, or even
upon clipped hedges and sheltered alleys. As
Mr. Elgood's gardens showed, all these adjuncts
and a thousand others may be used ; whether amid
the gorgeous architecture of the Alhambra, or upon
the splendid terraces of the Villa Borghese;
whether by the old red walls, with the moss-grown
stone coping and finials, of an English manor-
house, or the turf-cut terraces by a southern
harbour. The chief delight was the jewelled
blaze of blossoms, set in greenery or disposed
among statues, and architectural features. Even
a wooden bench, as seen in The End of the Terrace,
Abbey-Leix, imparted a touch that is architectonic
to a garden hardly " formal " in other respects.

A great danger is always at hand in attempting
too much. The so-called Italian style in vogue at
the Crystal Palace, the spaces laid out at the Bays-
water end of the Serpentine, are perilously near the
ideal of the suburban tea-garden. It is not a bad
rule to be prodigal with shrubs, close-cut hedges,
and rows of formal trees, to use turf freely, to be
lavish in the employment of arcades of roses or
clematis, screens of ivy and the like ; and, on the
other hand, to be most jealous in the admission of
vases, fountains, statues, mosaic pavements and
the like. In their right place these purely
architectural features are delightful. Take away the
somewhat Rococo fountain from the long avenue
of Bushey Park, and you would lose a feature of
the highest importance ; but there the trees form
a background that on its own scale is as definite
as the screen of clipped greenery behind the
statue in the garden of St. Anne's, Clontarf. In
the terrace of the Villa Borghese, Rome, we find
the most superb example of this formal treatment
of the garden, if indeed so architectural a com-
position does not belong to the building rather
than to the grounds around it. In the Villa Muti,
Frascati, we find the balance just turning on the
side of the garden; here the living walls are only
secondary to those of masonry, and foliage con-
tributes no little to the architectural effect of the

"st. anne's, clontarf"

by g. s. elgood

53