I do not think that it is wrong to try to achieve such contrasts in designing a range of gardens. The effect is great and it will never appear to be cheap, provided that it is carried out naturally. I do not think that in a place of the character of that just described one should introduce such objects as shrubs in tubs, or clipped trees; nor should one tolerate the appearance for the sake, perhaps, of colour, of any plant or flower that might not be found in the natural scene on which it is founded. We all know that in a rocky glen we need not look for brilliant colour, therefore the introduction of anything striking in this way would be a jarring note. To be sure I have seen the irrepressible scarlet geranium blazing through some glens in the island of St. Helena; but St. Helena is in the tropics, and a tropical glen is not the sort to which we have become accustomed in England. If one has lived at St. Helena for years and, on coming to England, wishes to be constantly reminded of the little island of glens and gorges and that immense “combe” where James Town nestles, beyond a doubt that strange person could not do better than create a garden of gullies with the indigenous geranium blazing out of every cranny. But I cannot imagine any one being so anxious to perpetuate a stay among the picturesque loneliness of the place. I think it extremely unlikely that if Napoleon I. had lived to return to France, he would have assimilated any portion of the gardens of Versailles with those that were under his windows at Longwood. I could more easily fancy his making an honest attempt to transform the ridge above Geranium Valley on which Longwood stands—if there is anything of that queer residence left by the white ants—the natural owners of the island—into a memory of the Grand Trianon, only for the “maggior dolore” that would have come to him had such an enterprise been successful.
My opinion is that a garden should be such as to cause a visitor to exclaim,—
“How natural!” rather than, “How queer!”
A lake may be artificial; but it will only appear so if its location is artificial; and, therefore, in spite of the fact that there are countless mountain tarns in Scotland and Wales, it is safest for the lake to be made on the lowest part of your ground. I dare say that a scientific man without a conscience could, by an arrangement of forced draught apparatus, cause an artificial river to flow uphill instead of down; but though such a stream would be quite a pleasing incident of one of the soirees of the Royal Society at Burlington House, I am certain that it would look more curious than natural if carried out in an English garden ground. The artificial canals of the Dutch gardens and of those English gardens which were made to remind William III. of his native land, will look natural in proportion to their artificiality. This is not so hard a saying as it may seem; I mean to say that if the artificial canal apes a natural river, it will look unnatural. If it aims at being nothing but a Dutch canal, it will be a very interesting part of a garden—a Dutch garden—plan, and as such it will seem in the right and natural place. If a thing occupies a natural place—the place where you expect to find it—it must be criticised from the standpoint of its environment, so to speak, and not on the basis of the canons that have a general application.
And to my mind the difference between what is right and what is wrong in a garden is not the difference between what is the fashion and what is not the fashion; but between the appropriate and the inappropriate. A rectangular canal is quite right in a copy of the Dutch garden; but it would be quite wrong within sight of the cascades of the Villa d'Este or any other Italian garden. Topiary work is quite right in a garden that is meant frankly to be a copy of one of the clipped shrubberies of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century that preceded landscape treatment, but it is utterly out of place in a garden where flowers grow according to their own sweet will, as in a rosery or a herbaceous border. A large number of people dislike what Mr. Robinson calls “Vegetable Sculpture,” and would not allow any example to have a place on their property; but although I think I might trust myself to resist every temptation to admit such an element into a garden of mine, I should not hesitate to make a feature of it if I wanted to be constantly reminded of a certain period of history. It would be as unjust to blame me on this account as it would be to blame Mr. Hugh Thomson for introducing topiary into one of his exquisite illustrations to Sir Roger de Coverley. I would, I know, take great pleasure in sitting for hours among the peacocks and bears and cocked hats of the topiary sculptor, because I should feel myself in the company of Sir Roger and Will Wimble, and I consider that they would be very good company indeed; but I admit that I should prefer that that particular garden was on some one else's property. I should spend a very pleasant twenty minutes in. a neighbour's—a near neighbour's—reproduction of the grotto at Pope's Villa at Twickenham, not because I should be wanting in a legitimate abhorrence of the thing, but because I should be able to repeople it with several very pleasant people—say, Arbuthnot, Garth, and Mr. Henry Labouchere. But heaven forbid that I should spend years of my life in the construction of a second Pope's grotto as one of the features of my all-too-constricted garden space.
One could easily write a book on “Illustrating Gardens,” meaning not the art of reproducing illustrations of gardens, but the art of constructing gardens that would illustrate the lives of certain interesting people at certain interesting periods. The educational value of gardens formed with such an intent would be great, I am sure. I had occasion some time ago to act the part of their governess to my little girls, and to Dorothy's undisguised amazement I took the class into the garden, and not knowing how to begin—whether with an inquiry into the economic value of a thorough grounding in Conic Sections, or a consideration of the circumstances attending the death of Mary Queen of Scots—I have long believed that a modern coroner's jury would have found that the cause of death was blood poisoning, as there is no evidence that the fatal axe was aseptic, not having been boiled before using—I begged the girls to walk round with me.
“This is something quite new,” said Rosamund—“lessons in a garden.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Did Miss Pinkerton ever tell you about a man named Plato?”
It was generally admitted that if she had ever done so they would have remembered the name.
I saw at once that this was a chance that might not occur again for me to recover my position. The respect that I have for Miss Pinkerton is almost equal to that I have for Lemprière or Dr. Wilkam Smith.