The Book of Garden Design

CHAPTER I. Of Gardens and Garden Designers

OF GARDENS AND GARDEN DESIGNERS

From the earliest times the garden has been regarded as a fitting adjunct to the dwelling-places of man. The very name seems to suggest a place of beauty and repose, where the fairest of fruits and flowers are collected into a small compass for our special pleasure and edification. The term “garden,” too, is often employed in a broader sense, meaning a tract of country, so lavishly endowed with natural beauties, as to almost suggest that it is the special property and care of some master hand, who cultivates his broad acres where we are content with inches. Eden, where, according to Milton’s famous description in “Paradise Lost,” the “cedar and pine and fir and branching palm,” mingled together in a tangle of sylvan loveliness, was a garden of Nature. We speak of Italy as the “garden” of the world, and are accustomed to attribute the same term to some specially favoured district or locality in each county at home. From each of these all suggestion of design is absent; a mightier hand than ours has planted their groves, watered their fertile valleys, and strewn the meadows and hedgerows with flowers. To these favoured spots of earth, those at any rate which are left us, the garden designer must cast his eye, as he sets out to learn the rudiments of his craft. Not that garden making consists in the endeavour to duplicate a whole landscape on a small scale—this was an error into which Brown’s followers blindly fell—but because so much that is of value to us may be gathered from an intelligent study of the means by which Nature achieves her most beautiful effects. The disposition of wood and water in a stretch of well-balanced scenery, the beautifully proportioned effect of level and rising ground, of valleys and hills; all these afford an object lesson, which, at some time or other, is bound to prove suggestive when endeavouring to forecast results in artificially arranged grounds. Nature, then, is the school where the novice should go to be thoroughly taught the rudiments of his art. Not only will he learn much that is not to be found in books, but his love of the picturesque and beautiful will be fostered and encouraged—a necessary proceeding if he is to achieve any measure of success as a maker of gardens.

To a certain extent the good designer is born not made, but much may be done by intelligent study and a real fondness for the work, to make up for any lack of natural ability in this direction. But in order to plan a really satisfactory garden, one qualification is absolutely essential: before all things the designer must be himself a gardener. That is, he must have spent some portion of his life actually working among the flowers and trees, whose suitable arrangement he afterwards proposes to decide. He must have sown and planted with his own hand, watched the growth of leaf and bud, and observed the habit of each plant and its adaptability to certain situations. Colour effects must also be noted, in short, nothing should be allowed to escape his eye which concerns the varied phases in the life of the simplest of the garden trees and flowers. Here lies the secret of half the failures which have occurred since garden making came to be regarded as something more than mere haphazard treatment of a piece of enclosed ground. Its votaries have many of them been men who knew absolutely nothing of the ways of flowers, to whom the wonders of nature were as a sealed book. That they were clever draughtsmen none will deny, and that many beautiful gardens were made on paper is equally to be admitted. But that was all, they were unable to see how their gardens would look after being planted a few years—probably they did not care, at any rate they were miserable failures, as must ever be the case when a well drawn design is considered sufficient proof of supreme ability. This class of garden maker is by no means extinct to-day, and with paper, drawing appliances, and a few books of plans for guidance, is able to turn out sketches which, to the uninitiated, seem to suggest unlimited acquaintance with the subject. But transfer these designs to the ground, lay out the paths and beds as he suggests, plant trees and raise mounds, dig watercourses and build rockeries to satisfy his caprice, and what do we find? Our garden is a wretched affair, a thoughtless jumble of half-matured ideas, a desecration of common-sense and good taste. Trees are planted where their graceful outline is cramped and hidden, flowering plants have no possible chance of displaying their full beauty before us, and everywhere we look there are signs of ignorance and wasted opportunity. There is something so contradictory in the term “garden architect”; it suggest the union of two totally distinct professions. Bricks and mortar, cut stonework and terracing, are now pushed into the garden, with the result that its real object is lost and its beauties crowded out. The architect is greedy; not content with designing the house and its approaches, its stabling and many accessories, he must needs take the garden in hand also, and we find his work everywhere and weary of its endless repetition. But we have brought it on ourselves, and must either rest content with that we know to be false, or make an effort to free ourselves from this meretricious form of art without further delay. All may not possess the faculty for suggesting a complicated plan for themselves, but there are few who may not study the outlines of the subject, so that they may be better able to control those whom they employ. After all, the garden should reflect the ideas and taste of the owner, not of the professional. The art of garden making consists very largely in the exercise of common-sense and a due perception of the fitness of things. These, coupled with a love for flowers and a knowledge of their requirements, will lead the beginner to success far more quickly than any ability he may possess for map and plan drawing.

The formal garden, as it existed in the days before its modern substitute cast a slur on the word “formality,” reflected no small credit on the skill and taste of its originators. There was a sense of breadth and stateliness about it which is sadly lacking in its modern rival. Especially praiseworthy were the open stretches of turf, and bold grouping of trees, which were characteristic of the time. The planting of avenues, to whose beauty many of our older houses owe so much, the alleys and greens bounded with hedges of clipped yew, and the wide borders filled with herbaceous flowers, were all pleasing in spite of their stiffness. Aided by handsome terraces, used only where needed, as at Haddon and other places, these old time gardens were free from any suggestion of trickery or deception. Their designers were men whose ideas, if a trifle austere, were perfectly honest; they liked their handiwork to display its beauties in a straightforward manner, with the consequence that their gardens were well-proportioned, and clearly betokened that money had been ungrudgingly spent where necessary. The modern formal garden is of quite another stamp, with its flimsily-constructed terraces, its ill-designed vases and statuary. There is a certain straining after effect noticeable, and a lack of dignity displayed, which makes this latter a very feeble imitation of its prototype. How can a modern villa be expected to act as a suitable foil to a style of garden design which is a cheap adaptation of that practised at Versailles or Chatsworth?

But, leaving the formal garden for a moment, and passing to a consideration of that which was the outcome of an entirely different set of ideas. The landscape school of designers believed that severity and stiffness were totally out of place in a garden, and the only way to secure artistic and beautiful effects was to go direct to Nature for a model. This was right in so far as it went; it became ridiculous when carried to extremes. If “Capability Brown,” himself the most noted member of the new school, and his followers had been content to study Nature, gathering thus many valuable lessons, and then being content to adapt them to the altered conditions which the nature of a garden imposed, much good might have resulted. But instead, their great ambition was to stifle any ideas they might have on the subject, and become slavish imitators, trying to reproduce a whole landscape within the small limits of the garden boundaries. Brown was hailed as a genius, and his advice requisitioned in the remodelling of many of England’s best gardens. All traces of formality were swept away, the terraces, stately parterres, yew hedges, and regular-shaped beds were abolished, and the ground laid out on entirely new lines. This consisted in the introduction of miniature mountains, streams and torrents, the latter crossed by bridges; the remaking of paths, so that they wound in serpentine curves, entailing needless labour to traverse. At Blenheim, Brown turned a river into a valley, with such effect that he is said to have proudly declared “the Thames would never forgive him.” He abhorred avenues, and this style of planting gave place under his rule to the irregular dotting of belts and clumps at varying intervals over an estate. There is no doubt but that some of the “follies” of his satellites were wrongly attributed to him, but, in spite of this, Brown was a consummate mannerist, and undoubtedly was the means of spoiling many a good garden by his efforts at deceptive planting and arrangement.

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