Warren House, Coombe Wood
This gentleman, unfortunately without any knowledge of plants, trees, or landscape beauty, launches out into the dreary sea of quotations from old books about gardens, and knows so little of where he is going, that he is put out of his course by every little drift of wind.
One goes through chapter after chapter thinking to get to the end of the weary matter only to find again nothing but quotations, even to going back to an old book for a song. When at last we come to a chapter on "Art in the Garden," this is what is offered us as sense on a charming subject, familiar to many, so that all may judge of the depth of this foolish talk about it! Such a writer discussing in this way a metaphysical or obscure subject might swim on in his inky water for ever, and no one know where he was!
Let us here point to the fact, that any garden whatsoever is but Nature idealised, pastoral scenery rendered in a fanciful manner. It matters not what the date, size, or style of the garden, it represents an idealisation of Nature. Real nature exists outside the artist and apart from him. The Ideal is that which the artist conceives to be an interpretation of the outside objects, or that which he adds to the objects. The garden gives imaginative form to emotions the natural objects have awakened in man. The raison d'être of a garden is man's feeling the ensemble.
But we cannot allow him to bring the false and confusing "art" drivel of the day into the garden without showing the absurdity of his ideas.
The illustrations are of the most wretched kind produced by some process, the only interesting one being one of Levens. The most childish ideas of the garden prevail—indeed we hardly like to call them childish, because children do put sensible questions and see clearly. For instance, for the author there is no art in gardening at all—the "art" consists entirely of building walls and planting Yew hedges. Thus the work of the late James Backhouse, who knew every flower on the hills of Northern England, and expressed that knowledge in his charming rock garden, is not art, but cutting a tree into the shape of a cocked hat is art, according to Mr. Sedding!
