Garden Design and Architects' Gardens Part 2

There are many gardens and parks which clearly show what is meant by the "natural" style; and though, like others, this art is too often imperfect, we have so many instances of its success, that it is curious to find any one shutting his eyes to them. There are lessons in picturesque gardening in every country in Europe and in many parts of North America. Mr. Olmstead's work in America and Mr. Robert Marnock's in England teach them; they may be learnt in many English gardens--from Sir Richard Owen's little garden in Richmond Park to Dunkeld--even small rectory and cottage gardens, wholly free of architectural aids, show the principle. It was but a few weeks ago, in the garden of the English Emba.s.sy in Paris, that I was struck with the simplicity of the lawn and plan of the garden there, and its fitness for a house in a city.

To support their idea that there is and can be no natural school of landscape gardening, the authors suppose what does not exist, and describe

A piece of ground laid out with a studied avoidance of all order, all balance, all definite lines, and the result a hopeless disagreement between the house and its surroundings. This very effect can be seen in the efforts of the landscape gardener, and in old country houses, such as Barrington Court, near Langport, where the gardens have not been kept up.

Here, instead of taking one of the many good examples in Britain, they take poor, beautiful old Barrington, now an ill-kept farmhouse, with manure piled against the walls and the ceiling of the dining-room propped up with a Fir pole! The foolish proposition here laid down, that, because a garden is picturesque there must necessarily be a "_studied avoidance of all order, all balance, all definite lines_," is disproved by hundreds of gardens in England. Why did not the authors take Miss Alice de Rothschild's garden at Eythorpe, or any beautiful and picturesque English garden, to compare with their results in stone and clipped and aligned trees?

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Unclipped trees at the Little Trianon. (Compare with cut on p. 52.)_]

"ALL OUR PATHS" ARE CROOKED!

For instance, because Nature is a.s.sumed never to show straight lines, all paths are to be made crooked; because in a virgin forest there are no paths at all, let us in our acre and a half of garden make as little of the paths as possible. Deception is a primary object of the landscape gardener. (_The Formal Garden._)

This, too, in the face of the facts of the case, of proof ready for the authors, in gardens in every country, from Prospect Park at Brooklyn to the English park at Munich. The fact that the Phoenix Park at Dublin is laid out in a fine, picturesque way does not forbid a great straight road through it--a road finer than in any strait-laced park in France.

The late Robert Marnock was the best landscape gardener I have known, and I never saw one of his many gardens where he did not make an ample straight walk where an ample straight walk was required--as, indeed, many may remember is the case in the Botanic Gardens in the Regent's Park, laid out by him.

Again, Nature is said to prefer a curved line to a straight, and it is thence inferred that all the lines in a garden, and especially paths, should be curved.

The utter contempt for design of the landscape gardener is shown most conspicuously in his treatment of paths. He lays them about at random, and keeps them so narrow that they look like threads, and there is barely room to walk abreast.

The opposite of this is indeed the truth, for many gardens and parks laid out with some regard to landscape beauty are partly spoiled by the size and number of the walks, as in the gardens around Paris--the Parc Monceau and b.u.t.tes Chaumont, for instance. The slightest knowledge of gardens would show that walks like threads are no necessary part of landscape gardening!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Wes...o...b..rt_]

This error shows well the effect of men reading and writing about what they have not seen.

The axiom on which landscape gardening rests is declared by Messrs.

Blomfield and Thomas to be

_Whatever Nature does is right; therefore let us go and copy her (p. 5)._

Here is a poor sneer at true art, not only at art in landscape gardening, but in all the fine arts. The central and essential idea of the landscape art is choice of what is beautiful--not taking the salt waste in Utah, or a field of weeds, or a Welsh slope of decayed slate, or the bog of Allen, or the thousand other things in Nature that are monotonous or dull to us, even though here and there beautiful as a wide bog may be. We can have in a garden a group of Scotch Firs as good in form as a fine group in wild Nature, and so of the Cedar of Lebanon and many of the lovely trees of the world. We can have bits of rock alive with alpine flowers, or pieces of lawn fringed with trees in their natural forms and as graceful as the alpine lawns on the Jura.

So of all other true art. The Venus of Milo is from a n.o.ble type of woman--not a mean Greek. The horses of the Parthenon are the best types of Eastern breed, full of life and beauty, not sickly beasts. Great landscape painters like Corot, Turner, and Troyon show us in their work the absurdity of this statement so impertinently used. They seek not ugly things because they are natural, but beautiful combinations of field, and hill, wood, water, tree, and flower, and gra.s.s, selecting groupings which go to make good composition, and then waiting for the most beautiful effects of morning, evening, or whatever light suits the chosen subject best, so give us lovely pictures! But they work always from faithful study of Nature and from stores of knowledge gathered from Nature study, and that is the only true path for the landscape gardener; as all true and great art can only be based on the eternal laws of Nature.

"THE ONLY GARDEN POSSIBLE!"

The word "garden" itself means an enclosed s.p.a.ce, a garth or yard surrounded by walls, as opposed to unenclosed fields and woods. The formal garden, with its insistence on strong bounding lines, is, strictly speaking, the only "garden" possible.

All other gardens are, of course, impossible to the authors--the Parc Monceau, the informal gardens about Paris, Glasnevin, the Botanic Gardens in Regent's Park and at Sheffield, Golder's Hill, Greenlands, Pendell Court, Rhianva, and the thousand cottage, rectory, and other British gardens where no wall is seen! The Bamboo garden at Shrubland, the Primrose garden at Munstead, the rock and other gardens, which we must keep in quiet places away from any sight of walls, are all "_impossible_" to these authors! How much better it would be for every art if it were impossible for men to write about things of which by their own showing they have not even elementary knowledge!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Thrumpton Hall. A type of numerous English gardens with informal planting_]

And the sketches in the book show us what these possible gardens are!

They are careful architects' drawings, deficient in light and shade; not engraved, but reproduced by a hard process, some being mere reproductions of old engravings; and diagrams of old "knots" and "patterns," with birds and ships perched on wooden trellises, without the slightest reference to any human or modern use. A curious one of Badminton will show fully the kind of plan the authors wish to see revived. Some of the ill.u.s.trations show the evils of the system which the authors advocate, notably one of Levens Hall, Westmoreland, a very interesting and real old garden. Interesting as it is from age, the ugliness of the clipped forms takes away from the beauty of the house.

Even in sketches of gardens like Montacute and Brympton, the beauty of the gardens is not well shown. The most interesting drawings, it is not surprising to find, are the informal ones! Many of the others show the _evil_, not the good, of the system advocated, by their hard lines and the emphasising of ugly forms.

"NO DESIGN IN LANDSCAPE"

Horticulture stands to garden design much as building does to architecture. This book has been written entirely from the standpoint of the designer, and therefore contains little or no reference to the actual methods of horticulture.

Throughout the book it is modestly a.s.sumed that there can be no "design" in anything but in lines of stone, and clipped trees to "harmonise" with the stone, and to bring in "order" and "balance." A Longleat, Highclere or Little Trianon, or any of the many English places which are planted in picturesque ways can show no design; but a French town, with its wretched lines of tortured Limes, is "pure" and "broad"

in design. _The naivete_ of the book in this respect is often droll. One amusing pa.s.sage is on p. 54:--

However rich the details, there is no difficulty in grasping the principle of _a garden laid out in an equal number of rectangular plots_. Everything is straightforward and logical; you are not bored with hopeless attempts to master the bearings of the garden.

This is the kitchen gardener's view, and that of the market gardener of all countries, but the fun is in calling the idea of it "_grasping a principle_"! At this rate makers of chessboards have strong claims to artistic merit!

No wonder that men who call a "principle" the common way of setting out kitchen and cabbage gardens from Pekin to Mortlake can see no design in the many things that go to make a beautiful landscape!

Equally stupid is the a.s.sumption, throughout the book, that the people the authors are pleased to term "landscapists" flop their houses down in the Gra.s.s, and never use low walls for dividing lines, nor terraces where necessary, never use walls for shelter or privacy, have no "order"

or "balance," and presumably allow the Nettles to look in at the windows, and the cattle to have a fine time with the Carnations!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tailpiece]

NO GRa.s.s IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING!

The following glaring piece of injustice is due to want of the most elementary consideration of garden design:--

Gra.s.s-work as an artistic quant.i.ty can hardly be said to exist in landscape gardening. It is there considered simply as so much background to be broken up with shrubs and Pampas Gra.s.s and irregular beds (p. 135).

The opposite of this is the fact. Gra.s.s-work as an "artistic quant.i.ty" did not exist in anything like the same degree before landscape gardening. One of the faults of the formal style of gardening still seen in France and Austria is that there is little or no Gra.s.s.

Compare the Jardin des Plantes in Paris with the Parc Monceau, or the many other gardens about Paris in which Gra.s.s is an "artistic quant.i.ty."

One of the most effective reasons indeed for adopting the English landscape garden was that it gave people some fresh and open Gra.s.s, often with picturesque surroundings, and, nowadays, one can hardly travel on the continent and not see some pleasant results of this. In England, the landscape gardeners and writers have almost destroyed every trace of the stiff old formal gardens, and we cannot judge the ill effects of the builder's garden so easily as in France. As a rule, the want of rest and freshness in tropical and sub-tropical gardens is due to the absence of those broad and airy breadths of greensward which, in gardens at least, are largely due to landscape gardening. Think of Warwick without its turf and glorious untrimmed Cedars!

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Goodwood. Example of large English places in which the gra.s.s sweeps up to the house_]

Consider the difference between a picturesque landscape like the Emperor of Austria's stately garden at Laxenberg, near Vienna, and the gardens in the same city formed of miserable clipped trees in lines!

Gra.s.s as an "artistic quant.i.ty" is finely visible at Laxenberg; in the old clipped gardens gravel and distorted trees are the only things seen in quant.i.ty--we cannot call it "artistic."

"Landscapist" is used throughout the book as a term of contempt. The authors take some of the worst work that is possible, and condemn all in the same opprobrious terms, as if we were to condemn the n.o.ble art of the builders of the Parthenon on seeing a "jerry" building in London.

They may be quite sure that there _is_ a true and beautiful art of landscape gardening, notwithstanding their denunciations, and it is none the less real because there is no smug definition of it that pleases the minds of men who declare that it does not exist.