GARDENS, OLD AND NEW.
Gardens, Old and New. Vol. H. Edited by John Leyland. Illustrated from Photographs by Charles Latham. The "Country Life" Library. (George Newnes. £2 2s. net.)—These volumes make all lovers of gardens break the Tenth Commandment. The beautiful pictures of English gardens bring home to the modest owners of still more modest gardens what they can never hope to have. And yet among these lovely domains are the residences of modest people who by "lint of taste and industry allied to a genuine love of horticulture have managed to make their gardens ideal, not only as flower gardens, but as planned and ordered pleasaunces which hold their own among the more famous domains of England. An excellent introduction to this attractive book surveys "in a broad sense the whole world of gardening." It
describes without too much of detail the growth of gardening "historically until it assumed the particular forms in which it exists to-day." It shows how the "old garden was distinguished by the spirit of enclosure," this being especially "the garden of the old Englishman." Then we learn how this spirit of seclusion broke down, and how by degrees men "thought it right to take Nature in an intimate sense into the garden plan." Then followed a recoil from extravagant copying of Nature where at best she could only be a minute imitation of herself, and "once again the taste of the garden-maker accepted in various forms the older plan." From the ebb and flow of these two ideas, the natural and the formal, "the true lesson to be drawn is one of eclecticism in selection combined with order in plan." The relation of garden to house must be borne in mind if a true harmony is to be the result, and we learn from the illustrations of England's stately homes what can be accomplished where taste and opportunity go hand in hand. The book will be a source of inspiration to all garden experts, and if there is much to which the ordinary man can never hope to attain, there are plenty of ideas to be gathered which can be carried out in gardens of very different capabilities. The Surrey residences of quite modern building will prove this. At the Orchards—the residence of Sir William Chance—and at Miss Jekyll's lovely old" Surrey Cottage" near Godalming, both of which are fully illustrated in this volume, will be seen gardening of a more modern kind at its best, and both of these gardens owe much of their beauty to the intelligence and care that their owners give to them. There is no reason why all owners of gardens should not in their degree go and do likewise.
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