Yet I remembered
certain restraining precepts: first, that law of art which condemns
incongruity--requires everything to be in keeping with its natural
surroundings--and which therefore, for one thing, makes an American
garden the best possible sort of garden to have in America; second,
that twin art law, against inutility, which demands that everything in
an artistic scheme serve the use it pretends to serve; third, a precept
of Colonel Waring's: "Don't fool with running water if you haven't money
to fool away"; and, fourth, that best of all gardening rules--look
before you leap.
However, on second thought, and tenth, and twentieth, one thought a day
for twenty days, I found that if water was to be impounded anywhere on
my acre here was the strategic point. Down this ravine, as I have said,
was the lawn's one good glimpse of the river, and a kindred gleam
intervening would tend, in effect, to draw those farther waters in under
the trees and into the picture.
Such relationships are very rewarding to find to whoever would garden
well. Hence this mention. One's garden has to do with whatever is in
sight from it, fair or otherwise, and it is as feasible and important to
plant in the fair as to plant out the otherwise. Also, in making my
grove paths, I had noticed that to cross this ravine where at one or two
places in its upper half a contour grade would have been pettily
circuitous and uninteresting, and to cross it comfortably, there should
be either a bridge or a dam; and a dam with water behind it seemed
pleasanter every way--showed less incongruity and less inutility--than a
bridge with no water under it.
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