BEAUTIFUL GARDENS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXiX, Issue 7727, 22 February 1909, Page 1

BEAUTIFUL GARDENS.

A STRIKING EVOLUTION.

" Old gardens remember what young gardens forget." To-day the fashion is ail for- 1 flowers^ —masses of flowers — | grouped in harmonious tones, perfect in colour, and gorgeous in effect. What made the old gardens so beautiful. — their simplicity, their design, their perfect proportions, their cool, green al- , leys, and their clipped yew hedges— ] these- things are forgotten and lost in endless colour schemes. ! The question arises, " What is a garden fori"' The late Dean Hole, among the wittiest and wisest of gardeners, put it to a schoolboy, and the prompt reply came: —"Strawberries." The boy's sister had different ideas. " Cro- ! quet," said one; "Garden parties," snid another. Then the Dean repeated the question to a lady described as a I middle-aged nymph, and she replied: — ji" What is a garden for? "For the soul, sir. for the soul of the poet! For visions of the invisible, for grasping the intangible, for hearing the inaudible, for exaltations above the miserable dulness of common life into the splendid regions of imagination and romance." Next the Dean put the problem to a gentleman of alderm.anie proportions, who declared that nothing in a garden touched him so sensibly as green peas I and new potatoes. And others to ' whom he applied for ideas held that a garden was for growing flowers —because flowers were good for table de- ! coration. Few imagined that a garden was a place for beauty and enjoyment. " God Almighty first planted a garden," quoth Francis Bacon. "And ! indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to spirits of man, without which build--1 ings and palaces are but gross handyworks." In the days of Early England gar- ! dens were generally laid out by the architects who built the mansions—aidj od by sculptors and hydraulic engineers, who set up statues and fountains and wonderful waterworks, designed to j drench the spectator when he least expected it. An ideal was set up in the Elizabethan era which it would be hard to improve upon. "In the royal ordering of gardens," said Francis Bacon, "there ought to be garden sfor all the months of the year." It was Francis Bacon who set the excellent fashion for lawns; for, said he, "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green; grass kept finely shorn." j Many 1 fashions in gardens have come and gone since those days. This was the era of formal gardens, and the era of irregular gardens ;there were Dutch gardens and Chinese gardens; the garden artificial and the garden natural; iind remembrances of all these fashions are to be found to-day wherever beautiful gardens exist. Modern art and craft allows many more beautiful flowers to be grown than in olden times. At every season of I the year flowers are to be found in i these" days in the show-gardens of Eng- ' land —as in tho Countess of Ulchester's wonderful garden at Abbotsbury. In n sanctuary sheltered by a hill, shut in by walls* and old trees, plants from :ii] parts of the world are to be encountered. Here flourish rhododendrons from the Himalayas, magnolias f of every species and variety, and camellias, in bloom for the first five months of the year. In the best gardens the best traditions of the past are now fulfilled more perfectly than ever before. An old ■monks' pnrden is preserved at Ashbrklsie, in Buckinghamshire, which would put tho original monks' gardens to shame. 'lore are quaint gravel walks, and borders forming the centre of nn intricate pattern of beds and path.-;. Everywhere at Ashbridge 1 riinitive ideals are seen perfect e-1. .Tid old-time memories are stirred as by i.bo horb and Lavender garden, the circular Rosary.'.surrounded by an old yow hedge, Terrace and Italian Gardons.