Studio: international art (5.1895)

The Garden and its Art

" VILLA MUTI, FRASCATI " BY G. S. ELGOOD

whole. In each of these, even in the Frascati for the clipped-hedges and other arboraceous

example, we do not feel a superabundance of features. Like the famous college turf of the

carving or stonework. The loveliness of the flowers anecdote—which "you must let it alone for a

makes you forget all else—even as on a beautiful few centuries " at one period of its preparation,

woman a spray of orchids attracts more attention so you cannot order a garden of this sort to be

than the diamond necklace she also wears. ready by the next season. But as a house is not

Yet we must also remember that a style, quite built for one generation only, so ought a garden

suitable for a perennial harvest of blossom, may to be planned for future years. By the time the

be ineffective when, as with us, fully half the year shrubs have grown, the stone and brick will have

knows no bloom worth taking into account. This mellowed—the architectural features, somewhat

was the great defect of the old " bedding-out " garish at first, will have become toned down ; the

system, and would have in itself alienated artistic sundial which when first erected looked unsympa-

sympathy from that fashion had not its hideous thetic, will have caught a certain grace as the

masses of lobelias, calceolarias, and scarlet geraniums corrosion of time has modified its contours, and

done so, much more thoroughly, on other grounds, added broken colour to its surface.

With the true " formal garden " the herbaceous If we cannot bring our natural features—hedges
plants again find a place. The dear old flowers, and the like—to accord with our architecture, let us
until lately grown only in cottage gardens, may be beware of attempting, by sham rusticity, to bring
welcomed back. For these the standard rose- down the purely artificial to the level of the semi-
tree, the one artificial growth the non-architectural natural. Rustic woodwork is usually painful ;
gardeners delighted in, may be still preserved or rockwork, or, worse still, clinkers and burnt
abandoned as you will; but the balustrades and bricks, are bad enough, but a worse horror is
terrace walls, the sheltered beds that the really near in the so-called virgin-cork. Indeed, the
formal garden offers, welcomes again the rose, very mention of such things in these pages must
grown on its own roots, rambling hither and be pardoned ; but lest the amateur possessed of a
thither almost at will, or trained on chains and few yards of garden should determine to abandon
in set devices, exactly as the owner prefers. an attempt at naturalistic horticulture and try

One drawback to the planning such gardens as architectural, let him beware of these things, as of

these illustrated, is undoubtedly the time required the silvered glass globe which is so prominently
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