Garden Design
THE International Exhibition held this month in London is a wonderful education for garden- lovers. Few, in a lifetime of travel, could visit so many gardens, and only by studying the pictures together could anyone gain a vivid sense of comparison between one country or period and another. The first superficial impression is how greatly we have all borrowed from one another, and how the centuries have repeated each other. But closer study modifies this view.
The design which first asserts itself by constant repetition is the formal garden and one feels that its curse is monotony. Always it takes the form of a long oblong laid out in the same design, a straight central walk swelling in the middle to contain some object, such as a flat lily pool. On either side a broad stretch is cut into numerous small, triangular beds filled with fussy little plants and divided by narrow zigzag paths.
Beyond these on either side come straight paths slightly narrower than the centre one, and finally two long, narrow borders finish the • extreme sides of the design.
It is small wonder that some gardeners, weary of up- holstering the same little triangular beds with the same little stiff plants year after year, had the cynical wit to fill up the beds with chips of coloured stones and have done with it !
For some reason hard to detect the mid-nineteenth century examples of these large, formal gardens are the least pleasing. They simply bristle with straight lines and acute angles, whereas Nature never makes a straight line, and curves even her sharpest angles. A garden might well retain all the formality necessary to accord with architecture and still enjoy some gracious curves, even as the arches and window tracery of our cathedrals.
Then there is the wall fountain, always the same. It issues from a curved arch in the wall which is exactly reproduced in a semi-circular basin below.
Topiary is a dangerous art if not used with judgment. Some fine old specimens of clipped yews are shown in the views of Packwood House, Oxfordshire ; but dotted incoherently amongst lawns and flower beds they can be atrocious, and one saw little evidence of taste in their use amongst the modern designs. Here the mistake was often seen of introducing a bit of everything—a short herbaceoug border, a lawn spotted -all over with clipped bushes, a formal garden with a statue and a lily-pool.
It is hard to say whether monotony or fussiness is the greater sin when you enter the sacred presence of Nature; and unhappily you sometimes find both evils combined. It seemed to me that of all the countries represented none has entered more perfectly into 'the spirit Of gardening —that is of humble, earnest co-operation with Nature— than Sweden. Here are dignity and beauty, variety and tranquillity. The stone-work is perfect, but the flowers are allowed to wander freely and do not look as if they were cut back every morning. Topiary, when desfred, is grouped apart with an intelligent design which prevents its looking like a nurseryman's show. Even the allot- ments round Stockholm are each a lovely little flower- garden with individual character, and a backyard was a delight. One secret in the success of these Swedish gardens, as also in some of the Scottish ones shown, seems to be that the plants receive the chief consideration. Everything else is subservient to making each plant as happy as possible and leaving it to show itself off.
Very fine examples of stone-work are shown in many gardens, but looking at some hundreds of specimens of noble balustrades and flights of steps and stone terraces, left one with the impression that in England the skeleton shows through the flesh overmuch. Turning to some of the gardens in the U.S.A. section you find the English stone-work designs carried out, but then clothed upon with rich masses of foliage and groups of tall lilies. At once you feel that you are in a home of flowers where the stone is the necessary adjunct to give them comfort and support, and in that capacity it is of extreme beauty.
Too often in the English pictures the plants take a definitely second place as though good stone-work was the principal object of a garden, with the para- doxical result that it loses its rightful beauty.
There are many stone ornaments on view, from frogs no larger than paper-weights up to life-sized groups of human figures. It is very interesting to study the setting in which statuary looks best. The largest group in the Hall is finely set -up against a crescent of dark cypresses, and this is the kind of background usually seen for garden statuary. But in a few cases—one such is " The Dying Gladiator " at Ronsham—you get the groups standing up against a wide, free background of sky and distant landscape, and the effect is startlingly lovely. To enjoy a fine group you must have distance, and come to it gradually with increasing detail. If it is shut up in a circle of foliage where you get the whole thing at close quarters, it loses most of its charm.
A garden often owes its perfection rather to its setting than to any superior merit of design. To take extreme instances of this we see Groote Schuur set amid glorious mountains which seem to blend with the gardens and together form a vision of beauty and grandeur in the crystal-clear sunshine of South Africa ; and Owlpen Manor, a typical Cotswold scene, where a small Eliz- abethan manor house and an old church nestle together in flowers under a low hill crowned with beechwoods.
Shows such as this one affect every observer differently. The strongest impression I carry away is that the essential key to success in every detail of garden designing is to allow Nature to show her infinite variety. The day on which a sense of monotony falls on you as you look at your garden the spell is broken and the charm is lost, and be very sure the fault is yours—not hers.
It is impossible for an untravelled visitor to judge the pleasure grounds of Europe, America and the British empire from a collection of photographs, but within the Royal Horticultural Society's new hall, England stands out for wide restful places. Great stretches of smooth lawns under spreading trees, and gentle streams wandering by thickets of reed and -iris, a very dream of peace and coolth in such a summer' as we have had. " Between the desert and the sown " in many countries is an abrupt transition. In our isles of peace we need scarcely be conscious when we leave the cultivated gardens and -when we enter on the wild. F. E. SETON.
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