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GARDEN DESIGN




BY THE SAME

  ALPINE FLOWERS for English Gardens. Second Edition.

  THE SUB-TROPICAL GARDEN; or, Beauty of Form in the Flower Garden.
    Second Edition.

  HARDY FLOWERS. Description of upwards of 1300 of the most ornamental
    species, with Directions for their Arrangement, Culture, etc. Fourth
    and Cheaper Edition.

  THE WILD GARDEN; or, Our Graves and Gardens made beautiful by the
    Naturalisation of Hardy Exotic Plants. Illustrated by ALFRED PARSONS.
    Second Edition. John Murray.

  THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN: Style, Position, and Arrangement. Followed
    by a Description of all the best Plants for it--their Culture and
    Arrangement. Second Edition, 1889. John Murray.

  GOD'S ACRE BEAUTIFUL; or, The Cemeteries of the Future. Third Edition.
    With Illustrations. London: John Murray. New York: Scribner &
    Welford. Published in a cheaper form and with additions under the
    name--

  CREMATION AND URN-BURIAL. Cassell & Co., Limited.

  THE PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. Considered in Relation to the Wants of
    other Cities, and of Public and Private Gardens. Being notes made in
    Paris Gardens. Third Edition. Illustrated. London: John Murray.


JOURNALS

  THE GARDEN. An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Gardening in all its
    branches. Vol. XL.

  GARDENING ILLUSTRATED. For Town and Country. A Weekly Journal for
    Amateurs and Gardeners. Vol. XIII.

  FARM AND HOME. A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Agriculture in all its
    branches. Stock, Dairy, Tillage, Stable, Pasture, Orchard,
    Market-Garden, Poultry, House. Vol. X.

  WOODS AND FORESTS. A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Forestry, Ornamental
    Planting, and Estate Management. Vols. I. and II. 1885.




GARDEN DESIGN
AND ARCHITECTS' GARDENS

    Two reviews, illustrated, to show, by
    actual examples from British gardens,
    that clipping and aligning trees to make
    them 'harmonise' with architecture is
    barbarous, needless, and inartistic

    by

    W. Robinson, F.L.S.


    London:
    John Murray, Albemarle Street
    1892


    To

    Sir Philip Currie, K.C.B.




PREFACE


  That we might see, eyes were given us; and a tongue to tell accurately
  what we had got to see. It is the alpha and omega of all intellect
  that man has. No poetry, hardly even that of Goethe, is equal to the
  true image of reality--had one eyes to see that.--T. CARLYLE, _Letters
  to Varnhagen Von Ense_.

_The one English thing that has touched the heart of the world is the
English garden. Proof of this we have in such noble gardens as the
English park at Munich, the garden of the Emperor of Austria at
Laxenberg, the Petit Trianon at Versailles, the parks formed of recent
years round Paris, and many lovely gardens in Europe and America. The
good sense of English writers and landscape gardeners refused to accept
as right or reasonable the architect's garden, a thing set out as bricks
and stones are, and the very trees of which were mutilated to meet his
views as to "design" or rather to prove his not being able to see the
simplest elements of design in landscape beauty or natural form. And
some way or other they destroyed nearly all signs of it throughout our
land._

_In every country where gardens are made we see the idea of the
English garden gratefully accepted; and though there are as yet no
effective means of teaching the true art of landscape gardening, we see
many good results in Europe and America. No good means have ever been
devised for the teaching of this delightful English art. Here and there
a man of keen sympathy with Nature does good work, but often it is
carried out by men trained for a very different life, as engineers in
the great Paris parks, and in our own country by surveyors and others
whose training often wholly unfits them for the study of the elements of
beautiful landscape. Thus we do not often see good examples of
picturesque garden and park design, while bad work is common.
Everywhere--unhappily, even in England, the home of landscape
gardening--the too frequent presence of stupid work in landscape
gardening offers some excuse for the two reactionary books which have
lately appeared--books not worth notice for their own sake, as they
contribute nothing to our knowledge of the beautiful art of gardening or
garden design. But so many people suppose that artistic matters are mere
questions of windy argument, that I think it well to show by English
gardens and country seats of to-day that the many sweeping statements of
their authors may be disproved by reference to actual things, to be seen
by all who care for them. We live at a time when, through complexity of
thought and speech, artistic questions have got into a maze of
confusion. Even teachers by profession confuse themselves and their
unfortunate pupils with vague and hyper-refined talk about art and
"schools" and "styles," while all the time much worse work is done than
in days when simpler, clearer views were held. To prove this there is
the example of the great Master's work and the eternal laws of nature,
on the study of which all serious