Landscape Gardening
The Chelsea flower show, which has several autumn but no spring rivals, proved a triumph for the landscape gardeners. The rock garden was not a flower garden at all, but a landscape. As someone said when Darlington Hall won the same cham- pionship last summer, " why bother to have any flowers ? " The championship for rhododendrons and their tribe went to Mr. Lionel de Rothschild. Like others of his name—witness the museum at Tring—he is a scientific specialist, if you like, a collector ; but his own garden in the New Forest, whatever rarities it may contain, is chiefly glorious for the breadth and charm of the landscape effects, for the scenic use of water and shadow and contour. The hedges make even the hard tennis courts—those often repellent rectangles—at least not un- lovely. All sorts of rare exotic trees and bushes consort so well with that lovely and typical English scene that they might be native. In the days of Evelyn England led the world in landscape gardening ; and the inherited art is most per- suasively illustrated in some of our parks, above all in Battersea. The torch has been handed on to most worthy successors. * *
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