From the earliest times of profane history, gardens are alluded to. The gardens of the Hesperides abounded with fruit of the most delicious kind, and the hanging gardens of Babylon were among the wonders of the world. The gardens of the Persians are called by Xenophon, “delightful places, fertile and beautiful;” and the gardens of Alcinous abounded with fruits, grapes, and various horticultural wonders. The philosophers of Athens walked in ornamental gardens, among shady groves, statues, and fountains.
There are many so-called styles of gardening, but these are readily divisable into two varieties—the geometrical and natural style. In the first may be comprised all gardens laid out with straight or geometrical lines. In the second, which is often called the English style, we include gardens and parks where the irregularity that we observe in pretty wild places, or in Nature’s own gardens, are preserved more or less judiciously and tastefully. On the one hand, we take Nature for a model; on the other, we merely apply geometrical lines to the garden and its contents. As the geometrical garden is merely a thing of straight lines, it is very much easier to dispose than the natural, with which a great many people make sad mistakes, and then blame the style instead of their own taste. It is very much easier to make straight walks, and circles, and figures of all kinds in a garden, than to imitate on a small scale the variety, and indefinite, ever-pleasing character exhibited by Nature where she most attracts us with floral beauty.
However, to see some specimens of the various styles of gardens will give a better idea of their worth, and main features, than any reading. We will indicate a few of the places where good examples are to be seen. The Crystal Palace is perhaps the best place to observe their differences, particularly as most boys visit that attractive place. The great terraces and fountains are, of course, in the geometrical style; while the more remote, or outer parts of the grounds, are a good example of the natural or English style of laying out grounds. The irregular “lakes,” surrounded by vegetation, the rock cropping out here and there, the natural-looking grouping of fine trees, and the freely rolling beautiful green grass mounds, &c. are, though perhaps not the most frequented, certainly among the best features of the Crystal Palace. The Royal Botanic Gardens in the Regent’s Park is also a good, a very good example of the best method of laying out gardens in the English style. It is disfigured, however, by a small, mean kind of geometrical garden, which we must not be supposed to praise. On the other hand, the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society at South Kensington is a capital example of a completely opposite style—the Italian and geometrical; and once having seen these, any boy can at once distinguish between the two, and probably say which he most admires.
In France, during the reign of Louis XV., the bad and artificial method was carried to excess;—clipped hedges, always laid out in straight lines—flower-beds tortured into fantastic shapes—trees cut into the form of pyramid haystacks, animals, &c. The gardens were like the manners and dress of that period, in which scarcely anything natural was left. The Dutch imitated the French: and this kind of gardening continued to prevail till attacked by Addison, in the “Spectator,” and Pope, in his Fourth Moral Epistle.
A GARDEN IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XV.
However, the boy’s garden is so small as a rule, that to attempt any kind of ambitious “laying out” would be nonsense; and having thus explained what is meant by different “styles” in gardening, we proceed to show how the boy’s garden should be laid out.
ON LAYING OUT A SMALL GARDEN.
