Garden-Craft Old and New

ure, and each fruitful country

and new systems of gardening. Hence the following discursus upon the historic English garden, which will, however, be as short as it can well be made, not only because the writer has no desire to wa

edi?val garden is only to be acquired piecemeal, out of casual references in old chronicles, and stray pictures in illuminated manuscripts, and in each case allowance must be made for the flu

orals, or Pliny the Younger's Letter to Apollinaris before us, in which an elaborate garden is minutely and enthusiastically d

it would appear that the Romans brought us the plane, the box, the elm, the poplar, and the chestnut. (The lime, he adds, was not generally planted here till after the time of Le N?tre: it was used extensively in avenues planted here in the reign of Charles the Second.) Of fruit trees, the

s matter may be gathered from the fact that monasteries abounded here in early times; and the religious orders have in all times been enthusiastic gardeners. Further be it remembered, many of the inmates of our monast

ere you should have parsley, cost, fennel, southern-wood, coriander, sage, savery, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuces, garden-cress, and peonies.... A noble garden will give thee also medlars, quinces, warden-trees, peaches, pears of St Riole, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds, dates, which are the fruits of palms, figs, &c.

date is Johannes de Garlandia, an English resident in France; but here is a description of the writer's garden at Paris. The ground here described consists of shrubbery, wood, grove, and garden, and from the account give

Westminster in 1276; and the annual rendering of a rose is one of the commonest species of quit-rent in ancient conveyances, like the "pepper-corn" of later times. The extent to which the culture of the rose was carried is inferred from the number of sorts mentioned in old books, which include the red, the sweet-musk, double and single, the dama

ur ancestors, the gilly-flowe

t flowers o

ons and streak'

er's

smelling." The variety of this flower, that was best known in early times, was the wall gilly-flowe

ng the viol

eriwinkle,

yellow, wh

rew there nor

a list of illuminated MSS. in the Library of the British Museum, where may be found illustrations of gardens, and which I tak

n is separated by a wooden paling from the orchard, where a man is busy pruning. An old painting at Hampton Court, of the early part of the

k is then faced with a low partition of brick or stone, and the mould, brought to an even surface, is planted in various ways. Numerous illustrations of the fifteenth century give a bowling-green and butts for archery. About this date it is assumed the style of English gardening was affected by French and Flemish methods, which our connection with Burgundy at that time would bring about. To this period is also ascribed the introduction of the "mount" in England, although one wo

ark where the deer grazed, the unscrupulous sportsman might from thence shoot a buck. In early days the mounts were constructed of wood or of stone, and were curiously adorned within and without. Later on they resumed the old barrow shape, and were made of earth, a

the above references, and others of like nature, we know that the topiary art ("opus topiarum"), which dealt in quaintly-shaped trees and shrubs, was in full practice here throughout the latter half of the middle ages. Samuel Hartlib, in a book published in 1659, writes thus: "About fifty years ago Ingenuities first began to flourish in England." Lawson, w

nd the orchards as exceeding fair; "and yn the orchardes were mounts writhen about with degrees, like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payne." There

de cattle, or to define the property. It also repeats the quadrangular court of big Tudor houses. We may also assume that the shape would commend itself to the taste of the Renascence School of the Elizabethan and Ja

nth in another: scarcely a plot but has this arrangement. The point to note, however, is, that while the English garden might take the same general outline as the foreign, it had its own peculiarities; and altho

country is a question of soil and physical features, and a question of race. The character of the scenery of a country, the section of the land gen

, while Art, on her side, provides that the terraces shall be well-proportioned as to width and height, and suit

pomegranate trees, which is all cut up into walks, and divided into terraces that you may go into a separate garden from every floor of the house, diversified with fountains, cascades, and statues, and joined by easy marble staircases, which lead from one to another." It is a hundred

the people, conveniently answering to the conditions of the country, runs upon long avenues and spacious grounds, divided by massive trellises into a series of ornamental sections-Bocages, Cabinets de Verdure, &c., which by their form and name, flatter the Arcadian sen

tre, and the owners of these stately chateaux gratified their taste for Nature in an afternoon promenade on a broad stone terrace, gazing over a carved balustrade at a world made truly artificial to suit the period. The style of Le N?tre is, in

, "they form light corridors and transpicuous arbours, through which the sunbeams play and checker the shade, set off the statues, vases, and flowers, that marry with their gaudy hotels, and suit the gallant and idle society who paint the walks between their parterres, and realise the fantastic scenes of Watteau and Durfé!" In a

Butler sarcastic

ides at anchor

do not live, b

, for next to nothing: Air, Earth, and Water are, as it were, under his control. The trees grow, t

ds are calculated to destroy high-growing trees, and the roots cannot penetrate into the ground to any depth, without coming to water. The land is flat, and although arti

plains intersected with sullen watercourses yield up only slight strips of land, therefore these niggardly strips, snatched from "an amphibious world" (as Goldsmith terms it), shall be crammed with beauty. The landscape outside gapes with uniform dulness, therefore the garden within shall be spick and span. The flat treeless expanse outside offers no objects for measuring distance, therefore the perspective of the

e successful! Or the regular strips of ground, the long straight canals, the adroit vistas of grassy terraces long-drawn out, the trees ranged in pots, or planted in the ground at set intervals and carefully shorn to preserve the limit of their shade! Nay, one can be merciful to the garden's usual crowning touch, which you get at its far end-a painted landscape of hills and dales and clumps of trees to beguile th

anure, and what cannot the neat-handed, frugal-minded, microscopic-eyed Dutchman do in the way of concentrated design with his bulbs, his clipt shrubs, his trim beds, his trickles of water, and strips of grass and gravel! And should all other resources fail h

n approves. It is, however, only one step farther than ordinary with him. All his dealings with Nature are of this abstract sort: his details are clever, and he is ingenious, if not imaginative, in his wholes. Still, I repeat, the Earth is richer, and mankind happier for the Dutch garden. There is an obvious excuse for its over-

Engl

Eden, demi

; secondly, by the changeful character of the country-this district is flat and open, this is hilly-so that mere conformity to the lie of the land would produce gardens which belong now to the French type, now to the Italian. It is the same with British Art of all

ish taste for landscape, which gives it distinction and is suggestive of very charming effects. The transcendent characteristic of the Engl

conscious relish for Nature, so far as relates to the love of Nature as a mirror of the moods of the mind, or as a refuge from man, this assertion may be true enough. Yet, surely the conscious delight in landscape must have be

a gipsy. The first is a picture painted from a cherished model, the second is a photograph of the same model undressed. Brown's work, in fact, represents the garden's return to its original barbaric self-the reinauguration of the elemental. Let it not be said, then, that Brown discovered the model, for her fairness was an established fact or she would not have been so richly

pression in the English garden.[19] The high thick garden-walls of the old fighting-days shall have ample outlooks in the shape of "mounts," from whence views may be had of the open country. The ornamental value of forest tree

gras, ful sof

bbery, wilderness, and park. Nay, Henry VIII.'s garden at Nonsuch, had its wilderness of ten acres. "Chaucer opens his Clerke's Tale with a bit of landscape admirable for its large style," says Mr Lowel

ure

fuse on hill and

Herr

of blossoms, bi

of June, and

y attain that verdure which the humidity of our climate bestows." There are the leafy forest ways gemmed with flowers; the vast hunting-grounds of old kings, the woodland net of hazel coppice, the hills and dales, sunned or shaded, the plains mapped out with hedgerows and enlivened with the glitter of running water: the heather-clad moors, the golden gorse covers, the rolling downs dotted over with thorns and yews an

wns, and f

ibbling flo

on whose b

ng clouds d

im with da

ooks and r

e. Says Jefferies, "If the clods are left a little while undisturbed in the fields, weeds spring up and wild flowers bloom upon them. Is the hedge cut and trimmed, lo! the bluebells flower the more, and

it the translucent tints of dawn or sunset, or wind and cloud-fantasy; or veil of purple mist, or grey or red haze, or drift of rain-shower thrown athwart the hills, fo

he day jogs along to its evensong as to hold observation on the stretch, to force attention to Nature's last word, to fill the fallow-mind of lonely country folk with gentle wonder, and swell the "harvest of a quiet eye," is it strange that a land like ours should have bred an unrivalled school of Nature-readers am

creator; he has not had to labour at an artificial world he himself had made, but only to adorn, to interpret the world as it is, in all its blithe freedom. "The earth is the garden of Nature, and each fruitful country a Paradise;"

acticable in all weathers, seem made to be the sanctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure; the body is there relaxed, the mind diverted, the eyes are enchanted by the verdure of the turf and the bowling-greens; the variety of flowers offers pleasant flattery to the smell and sight, Nature alone, modestly arrayed, and never made up, there spreads out her ornaments and benefits. How the fountains beget the shrubs and beautify them! How the shadows of the woods put the streams to sleep in beds of herbage." This is poetry! but it is well that one French writer (and he so distinguished) should be found to depict an English garden, when architects like Jussieu and Antoine Richard signally failed to reproduce the thing, to order, upon French soil! And the Petit Trianon was in itself a

anctuary of a sweet and placid pleasure" to the bustling crowd of mi

homogeneous, suiting alike the characteristics of the country and of the people for whom it is made. Compared with this, the foreign garden must be allowed to be richer in provocation; there is distinctly more fancy in

ch to a pastoral romance. Nature is idealised, treated fancifully in each, yet how different the quality of the cont

But how different the platform, how different the mental complexion, the technique of the artists! How different the detail and the atmosphere of the garden. The rusticity of the foreign garden is dished up in a more delectable form than is the case in the English, but there is not the same open-air feeling about this as about

unbroken descent, inheritor of the garden-craft of the whole civilised world. It stands

country, wo

more by Eart

eir hearts

rrounded with groves of pines and cypresses-so frankly artistic, yet so subtly blending itself into the natural surroundings-into the distant plain, the fringe of purple hil

e impression that he is far more in love with his own ideas about Nature than with Nature herself; that he uses her resources not to interpret them or perfect them along their own lines, but express his own interesting ideas. He must provide stimulus for his imagination; his nature demands food for reverie, point for ecstasy, for delicious self-abandonment, for bedazzlement with ideal beauty, and the

ould incline us always to let well alone and not press things too hard. If the qualities of an English garden that I speak of are to be attributed to this temper, then, to judge by results, laissez faire is not a bad motto for the gardener! Certain it is that the dominance of man is more hinted at here than proclaimed.

e ingenuity or specious extravagance. The conventionalities of its borders, its terraces and steps and images in lead or marble, its ornamental water, its trim geometrical patterns, its quincunx, clipped hedges, high hedges, and architectural adornments shall be balanced by great sweeps of lawn and noble trees that are not constrained to take hands, as in France, across the road and to look proper, but are left to grow large and thick and

ould have an equal regard for Nature and Art; it should represent a marriage of contraries, should combine finesse and audacity, subtilty and simplicity, the regular and the unexpected, the ideal and the real "bound fast in one with golden ease." In a

aces and architectural accessories, all trim and fit and nice. Then comes the smooth-shaven lawn, studded and belted round with fine trees, arranged as it seems with a divine carelessness; and beyond the lawn, the ferny heather-turf of the park, where the dappled deer browse and the rabbits run wild, and the sun-chequere

ses touch with the picturesque commonplaces of our land; never loses sympathy with the green world at