It is not so much at what he finds in the landscape gardener's creations that the architect demurs, but at what he misses. It is not so much at what the landscape-gardener recommends that the architect objects, as at what moving in his own little orbit he wilfully shuts out, basing his opposition to tradition upon such an _ex parte_ view of the matter as this--"There are really two styles, one strait-laced, mechanical, with much wall and stone, or it may be gravel, with much also of such geometry as the designer of wall-papers excels in--often poorer than that, with an immoderate supply of spouting water, and with trees in tubs as an accompaniment, and, perhaps, griffins and endless plaster-work, and sculpture of the poorer sort." Why "poorer"? "The other, with _right desire_, though _often awkwardly_ (!) accepting Nature as a guide, and endeavouring to illustrate in our gardens, _so far as convenience and knowledge will permit_, her many treasures of the world of flowers" ("English Flower Garden"). How sweetly doth bunkum commend itself!
It is not that the architect is small-minded enough to cavil at the landscape-gardener's right to display his taste by his own methods, but that he strikes for the same right for himself. It is not that he would rob the landscape-gardener of the pleasure of expressing his own views as persuasively as he can, but that he resents that air of superiority which the other puts on as he bans the comely types and garnered sweetness of old England's garden, that he accents the proscription of the ways of interpreting Nature that have won the sanction of lovers of Art and Nature of all generations of our forefathers, and this from a School whose prerogative dates no farther back than the discovery of the well-meaning, clumsy, now dethroned kitchen-gardener, known a short century since as "the immortal Brown." There is no reviewer so keen as Time!
"Nothing is more the Child of Art than a Garden."
[Footnote 37: These notes make no pretence either at originality or completeness. They represent gleanings from various sources, combined with personal observations on garden-craft from the architect's point of view.--J. D. S.]
"For every Garden," says Sir William Temple, "four things are to be provided--Flowers, Fruit, Shade, and Water, and whoever lays out a garden without these, must not pretend it in any perfection. Nature should not be forced; great sums may be thrown away without Effect or Honour, if there want sense in proportion to this." Briefly, the old master's charge is this: "Have common-sense; follow Nature."