PLAN OF TENNIS LAWN, TERRACES, AND FLOWER GARDEN.
The length of the terrace adds importance to the house, and in small gardens, where the kitchen-garden occupies one side of the flower-garden, the terrace may with advantage be carried to the full extent of the ground, and the kitchen-garden separated by a hedge and shrubs; and at the upper end of the kitchen-garden may be a narrow garden, geometrical, rock, or other garden, set next the terrace wall.
The treatment of the upper terrace should be strictly architectural. If the terrace be wide, raised beds with stone edging, set on the inner side of the terrace, say alternately long beds with dwarf flowering shrubs or hydrangeas, and circles with standard hollies, or marble statues on pedestals, that shall alternate with pyramidal golden yews, have a good effect, the terrace terminating with an arbour or stone Pavilion. Modern taste, however, even if it condescend so far as to allow of a terrace, is content with its grass plot and gravel walks, which is not carrying Art very far.
Laneham tells of the old pleasaunce at Kenilworth, that it had a terrace 10 ft. high and 12 ft. wide on the garden side, in which were set at intervals obelisks and spheres and white bears, "all of stone, upon their curious bases," and at each end an arbour; the garden-plot was below this, and had its fair alleys, or grass, or gravel.
The lower terrace may well be twice the width of the upper one, and may be a geometrical garden laid out on turf, if preferred, but far better upon gravel. Here will be collected the choicest flowers in the garden, giving a mass of rich colouring.
Although in old gardens the lower terrace is some 10 ft. below the upper one, this is too deep to suit modern taste; indeed, 5 ft. or 6 ft. will give a better view of the garden if it is to be viewed from the house. At the same time it is undeniable that the more you are able to look down upon the garden—the higher you stand above its plane—the better the effect; the lower you stand, the poorer the perspective.
Modern taste, also, will not always tolerate a balustraded wall as a boundary to the terrace, but likes a grass slope. If this poor substitute be preferred, there should be a level space at the bottom of the slope and at the top; the slope should have a continuous line, and not follow any irregularity in the natural lie of the ground, and there should be a simple plinth 12 to 18 in. high at the bottom of the slope.
But the mere grass slope does not much help the effect of the house, far or near; a house standing on a grass slope always has the effect of sliding down a hill. To leave the house exposed upon the landscape, unscreened and unterraced, is not to treat site or house fairly. There exists a certain necessity for features in a flat place, and if no raised terrace be possible, it is desirable to get architectural treatment by means of balustrades alone, without much, or any, fall in the ground. The eye always asks for definite boundaries to a piece of ornamental ground as it does for a frame to a picture, and where definite boundaries do not exist, the distant effect is that of a house that has tumbled casually down from the skies, near which the cattle may graze as they list, and the flower-beds are the mere sport of contingencies.
