True Use of a Garden

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West Dean West Dean. Example of country seat in which terracing is needless, and in which turf may and indeed must often come to at least one side of the house

It is surely flying in the face of Nature to fill our gardens with tropical plants, as we are urged to do by the writers on landscape gardening, ignoring the entire difference of climate and the fact that a colour which may look superb in the midst of other strong colours will look gaudy and vulgar amongst our sober tints, and that a leaf like that of the Yucca, which may be all very well in its own country, is out of scale and character amidst the modest foliage of our English trees. (The Formal Garden.)

A passage full of nonsense! The true use and first reason of a garden is to keep and grow for us plants not in our woods and mostly from other countries than our own! The Yucca, we are told by the authors, is a "plant out of scale and character among the modest foliage of our English trees"! The Yuccas of our gardens are natives of the often cold plains of Eastern America, hardy in, and in every way fitted for, English gardens, but not amidst English trees. Is the aim of the flower-garden to show the "modest foliage" of English trees when almost every country house is surrounded by our native woods? According to such childish views, the noble Cedars in the park at Goodwood and on the lawn at Pain's Hill are out of place there! What is declared by Mr. Blomfield to be absurd is the soul of true gardening—to show, on a small scale it may be, some of the precious and inexhaustible loveliness of vegetation on plain or wood or mountain. This is the necessary and absolutely only true, just and fair use of a garden!


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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