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._

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: Garden Design and Architects' Gardens by Robinson
• 2: Beneath all art there are laws
• 3: 46 improving battersea park
• 4: The views of old writers will help us little
• 5: But harmful both to the garden and home landscape
• 6: Illustration Gilbert White's house at Selborne
• 7: The better for the garden and landscape
• 8: And moat all without further use
• 9: To old gardens like Haddon and Rockingham
• 10: About the time Barry laid out Shrubland
• 11: As well as clipped Yews at Elvaston
• 12: Great landscape painters like Corot
• 13: The informal gardens about Paris
• 14: Are largely due to landscape gardening
• 15: Instead of the spasmodic futility of Battersea Park
• 16: I hold up the clipped Yew tree to obloquy
• 17: I must clip them to form my hedge
• 18: In a country slightly diversified it is
• 19: It represents an idealisation of Nature
• 20: Or ramping lions in Lincoln green