Garden-Craft Old and New

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fine tha

s the slow result of old affection for, old wonder at, beauty in forms, colours, tones; old enthusiasm for green turf, wild flower, and forest tree. Take it at its best, it records the matu

id atmospheric changes, the shifting lights and shadows, the life and movement in the sky, and the vivid intense colouring of our moist climate, has given our tastes a decided bent this way, and fa

s, travelled men, initiated spirits, like Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Shaftesbury, Temple, and Evelyn, whose aim is to give garden-craft all the method and distinctness of which it is capable. However saturated with aristocratic ideas the courtier-gardener may be, however learned in the circumspect style of the Italian, he retains his native relish for the wood

own anywhere else, which leaves all their dry walks in other countries very unpleasant and uneasy; the other cannot be found in France or in Holland as we have it, the soil not admitting that fineness of blade in Holland, nor the sun that greenness in France during most of the summer." And following upon this

the going forth, and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on both sides; and I like well that four acres be assigned to the Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either side, and twelve to the main Garden. The Green hath two pleasures: the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green gr

tion, the sure touch of the writer, we may infer that Gorhambury had some such garden, the fruit of its master's "Leisure with honour," or "Leisure without honour," as the case may be. But what seems certain is, that the essay is only a sign of the ordinary English gentleman's mind on the subject at that

s which one thinks he may have described, not from the life, but from the figures in "The Dream of Poliphilus" (a book of woodcuts published in Venice, 1499), features of the Enchanted Island, to wit the two fountains-the first to spout water, to be adorned with ornaments of images, gilt or of marble; the "oth

the deep intent of the old master, but must equally recognise the air of gravity that pervades his recommendations-the sweet reasonableness of suggestions for design

Master! we will hold thy hand as far as thou wilt go; and the clarion

cenery-pause in his denunciation of Art in a garden. "God almighty first planted a Garden; and indeed it is the purest of humane pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the Spirits of man, without which Buildi

o say more were impossible. To say less were to belittle your subject. I think of Ben Jonson's simile, "They jump farthest who fetch their race largest." For Bacon "fetches" hi

rimination of expression. Then, too, his mind was set upon the conquest of Nature, of which gardening is a province, for the service of man, for physical enjoyment, and for the increase of social comfort. Yet was he an Englishman first, and a fine gardener afterwards. Admit the author's sense of the delights of art-magic in a garden, none esteemed them more, yet own the discreet economy of his imaginative strokes, the homely bluntness of his criticisms upon fo

nise what I wish to point out. H

not too busie, or full of work; wherein I, for my part, do not like Images cut out in Juniper, or other garden stuffs; they are for Children. Little low Hedges, round

they may lie under the windows of the House, on that side which the Garden

efreshment, but Pools mar all, and make the G

forms (of Feathers, Drinking Glasses, Canopies, and the like) (see "The Dream of P

d before the sentence is done the balance rides easy. And this scrupulousness is not to be wholly ascribed to the fastidious bent of a mind that lived in a labyrinth; it speaks equally of the fineness of the man's ideal, which lifts his

ns in the strange document-half prayer, half Apologia-written after he had made his will, at the time of his fall, when he presumably concluded that anything might

s a science in so methodical a manner that but for what it contains besides, and for its mint-mark of a great spirit, the thing might pass as an extract from

n oak or cedar." The older men thought first of the effects that they wished to attain, and proceeded to realise them without more ado. They had no "codes of taste" to appeal to, and no literary law-givers to stand in dread of. They applied Nature's raw materials as their art required. And yet, compared with the methods of the heavy-handed realist of later times such unscrupulousness had a merit of its own. To suit their purposes the old gardeners may have defied Nature's ways and wont; but, even so, they act as fine gentlemen should: they never pet and patronise her: they have no blunt and blundering methods such as mark the Nature-maulers of the Brown or Batty-Langley school: if they cut, they do not mi

k up the crumbs that fall from this rich man's table, and to amplify the two hundred and sixty lines of condensed wisdom that it contains. Its category of effects reaches even the free-and-easy planting of the skirts

liage, was not unknown to the gardener of early days, but it was long before foreign plants were introduced to any great extent. Loudon has taken the trouble to reckon up the number of specimens that came to England century by century, and we gather fr

at Heutzner, writing of English gardens in 1598, specially

would seem that the practice of variegating, and of combining the v

t is perhaps anywhere in this land.... His flowers are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture of them very methodical and curious; but to speak of the garden in

a (a green) had a flower on it of the breadth of half-a-crown, like an embroidered star of many colours....

in wild Heaths) to be set with pleasant herbs, wild thyme, pinks, periwinkle, and the like Low Flowers being withall sweet and sightly"-what does it imply? Primarily, it declares the artist who knows the value of contrast, the interest of blended contrariness; it is the cultured man's hankering after a many-faced Nature readily accessible to him in his many moods; it tells, too, of the drift of the Englishman towards familiar landscape effects, the garden-mimicry which sets towards pastoral Nature; but above and b

nted with architectural and other devices. The Palace at Nonsuch is encompassed with parks full of deer, with delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks enclosed with trees. "In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Actaeon turned into a stag, as he was sprinkled by the goddess and her nymphs, with inscriptions." Theo

description of the garden of Moor Park, which is given with cons

ees, out of Flower and Fruit: From this Walk are Three Descents by many Stone Steps, in the Middle and at each End, into a very large Parterre. This is divided into Quarters by Gravel-Walks, and adorned with Two Fountains and Eight Statues in the several Quarters; at the End of the Terras-Walk are Two Summer-Houses, and the Sides of the Parterre are ranged with two large Cloisters, open to the Garden, upon Arches of Stone, and ending with two other Summer-Houses even with the Cloisters, which are paved with Stone, and designed for

ery Shady; the Walks here are all Green, the Grotto embellished with Figures of Shell-Rock work, Fountains, and Water-works. If the Hill had not ended with the lower Garden, and the Wall were not bounded by a Common Way that goes through the Park, they mig

arliest manual for the guidance of gardeners. It deals with technical matters, such as the treatment and virtue of different soils, the

ion in this class of literature. It is divided into two portions, of which the first is occupied by

&c.," published in London (1630), heralds the changes whic

i?val, the Elizabethan, the Jacobean, the Georgian types. Each and all are English, but English with a difference-with a declar

James I.; the painted Dutch statues as at Ham House; the quaint canals, the winding gravel-walks, the formal geometrical figures; the quincunx and étoile of William and Mary; later on, the smooth, bare, and

o strong a current, that there remains scarcely any private garden in the Un

ng influences of English taste. A picture on the staircase of the house, apparently Dutch, bears the inscription, "M. Beaumont, gardener to King James II. and Colonel James Grahme. He laid out the gar

yew still find with each returning summer their wings clipt and their talons; there a stately remnant of the old promenoirs such as the Frenchman taught our fathers,[26] rat

ced, for the design of the existing grounds dates from William III. Nonsuch in Surrey, near Epsom race-course, is a mere memory. In old days this was a favourite resort of Queen Elizabeth; the garden was designed by her father, but the greater part carried out by the last of the Fitzala

in 1564 by Cecil, and became the favourite haunt of the Stuar

ibson in 1691, it had many charms. "The maze, or wilderness, there is very

r frame about seven feet high, and set with silver firs hedge-wise.... His terrace walk, bare in the middle and grass on either side, with a hedge of rue on one side next a low wall, and a row of dwarf trees on the other, shews very fine; and so do from

ds and spires of the same, all under smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden are two myrtle hedg

rubs. In the several gardens, which consisted of mazes, wildernesses, knots, alleys, &c., are mentioned a great variety of fruit trees and shrubs, particu

house which hee beautified with orchardes, gardens, and groves of much varietie and great delight; soe that whether that you consider the pleasantness of the seate, the goodnesse of the soyle, or the other delicacies be

extent to which fruit was cultivated in old time is seen by the magnitude of the orangery at Beddington House, Surrey, which

nferior to few of the best villas in Italy itself; the house furnished like a great Prince's, the parterres, flower-gardens, orangeries, groves, a

ove of oaks and hedges of yew in the garden, and a handsome row of tall elms

he walks and alleys, along which Laud had conducted Charles and Henrie

Vandals on to their sorry work by flattering them for their good taste. For what Horace Walpole did to expose the poverty-stricken design and all the poor bankrupt whimsies of the garden of his day, we owe him thanks; but not for including in his condemnation the noble work of older days. In touching upon Lord Burleigh's garden, and that at Nonsuch, he says: "We find the magnificent though false taste was known here as early as the reigns of Henry VIII. and his daughter." This is not bad, coming fr

at I have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad"-Walpole has this icy sneer: "Any man might design and build as s

of the case; they soon become curiosities. Yet we may fairly regret the want of tenderness in dealing with these gardens of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, for, by all the laws of human expression, they should be masterpieces. The ground-chord of the garden-enterprise of those days was struck by Bacon, who rates buildings and

and. These gardens, then, are the handiwork of the makers of England, and should bear the marks of heroes. They are relics of the men and women who made our land both fine and famous in the days of the Tudors; they represent the mellow f

tty thoughts had palled the taste, before gardening had learnt routine; while Nature smiled a virgin smile and had a sense of unsolved mystery. More than this, garden-craft was then no mere craze or passing freak of fashion, but a serious item in the round of home-life; -gardening was a thing to be done as

history of our land. It embodies the characteristics of the medi?val, the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages just as faithfully as do other phases of contemporary art. It contains the same principle of beauty, the same sense of form, that animated these; it has the same curious turns of expression, the same mixture of pedantry and subtle sweetness; the same wistful daring

Walpole to think in that manner), was, in truth, to indict our nation on a line of device wherein w

ied too far, and Nature not carried far enough in the old garden, yet did it deserve better treatment. Judged both from its human and its artistic side, the place is as loveable as it is pathetic. It has the pathos of all art that survives its creators, the pathos of all abandoned human idols, of all high human endeavour that is blown upon. What is more, it holds, as it w

e through the foliage, the shadows on the grass-not the master who begot the thing, for has he not been dead, and his vacant orbits choked with clay these two hundred years and more! To him, of course, may be ascribed the primal thought of the place, an

s characteristics to its maker, if it had not expressed the mind of its designer, why the essential differences of the garden of this style and of that! Properly speaking, the music of all gardens is framed out of the same simple gamut of Nature's notes-it is but one music poured from myriad lips-yet out of the use of the same raw elements what a variety of tune

it has not yet recovered. It may be admitted that, in the case of an individual garden here and there, the violation of these relics may be condoned on the heathen principle of tit for tat, because Art had, in the first instance, so to speak, turned her back

that might have g

s Apollo's l

of inviting mystery and homely reserve that our forefathers loved, and which is

of ancien