Studio: international art (45.1909)

Architectural Gardening.—III.

burgh, Norfolk, on page 184, and the house and
garden plan on page 186, for a site near Sherborne,
in Dorset, the accompanying designs have been
made with no such restrictions, either of site or
space, except that bounded by the paper on which
they are drawn. These designs, therefore, are to
be considered less as projects in practical building
than as efforts in pictorial design. In each case,
however, some idea, more or less nebulous, has been
sketched out beforehand, so that each detail, as here
illustrated, has some relation or connection with
other portions of an entire scheme. In other words,
nothing is shown in any of these designs which
could not be carried out in actual practice.

They are intended to embody and illustrate some
of the principles of architectural gardening as applied
to its design. Something of the effect wrought by
the hand of Time upon such work has been anti-
cipated in some of these drawings, not only for the
sake of pictorial effect, but also because new houses
and gardens, whatever their merits, cannot possess
the same charm that comes with age or long use.
Most of the so-called landscape gardens now
existing are of a respectable age, and just so far as
time and use have helped them, they gain accord-
ingly in comparison with the newer gardens of the
formal manner. In this way they claim a merit
which is in fact no inherent part
of the design.

It is to the advantage of the
formal garden that nature should
not be kept within too narrow con-
fines. Topiary work, such as that
illustrated opposite, in the de-
sign for a green alley of clipped
yew and evergreen oak, is best
when it is more or less freehand
(as in the examples at Rockingham
Castle or Cleeve Prior Manor) —
when the compromise between art
and nature is a fair one. If this
is not allowed, the result is apt to
be that stiffness and hardness of
outline which was one of the
blemishes of the formal school,
and one most certainly to be
avoided in modern design.

In the February number of
The Studio this year we published
a short description, with an illus-
tration, of a proposed seaside
village in Norfolk. The project
is to extend the present typical
and picturesque village of Happis-
182

burgh along the cliff on the north side of the
village, and endeavour by following the old tradi-
tion in simple building to re-create its interest and
charm. The pencil drawing on page 184 shows
a design for one of the larger houses, with the
entrance to the garden on the south side.

Norfolk can claim the possession of as distinctive
and characteristic style as any county, and there is
an unusually marked difference between its work
and that of the adjoining counties of Suffolk, Cam-
bridgeshire and Lincolnshire. A Norfolk house is
easily known by its high-pitched roof of reed-
thatching, its walling of flint or flint and brick, its
parapet gables of brick and flint, and its always
interesting detail in the brickwork at the springing,
parapet and apex of the gables.

The house and garden just referred to were
designed on traditional lines and show some of the
principal characteristics of old Norfolk building.
In the old work the dexterous treatment of bricks,
sometimes built at random, and often (with more
effect) in some simple geometrical pattern amidst
the main walling of fl nt, greatly helps to give to
these fine old buildings that look of quiet dis-
tinction nearly always seen in the work of bygone
days' and so rarely in the buildings of to-day. The
art of the Norfolk building is appealing because it

DESIGNED AND DRAWN BY F. L. GRIGGS