Hence around the cottage, the castle or the palace waves and
blooms the garden."
Was he not right? This is why, in our pleasant Northampton affair, we
have accepted it as our first rule of private gardening that _the house
is the climacteric note_.
This is why the garden should never be more architectural and artificial
than the house of which it is the setting, and this is why the garden
should grow less and less architectural and artificial as it draws
away from the house. To say the same thing in reverse, the garden,
as it approaches the house, should accept more and more
discipline--domestication--social refinement, until the house itself at
length seems as unabruptly and naturally to grow up out of the garden as
the high keynote rises at the end of a lady's song.
By this understanding of the matter what a fine truce-note is blown
between the contending advocates of "natural" and of "formal" gardening!
The right choice between these two aspects of the art, and the right
degree in either choice, depend on the character of the house. The house
is a part of the garden. It is the garden's brow and eyes. In gardening,
almost the only thing which costs unduly is for us to try to give our
house some other house's garden. One's private garden should never be
quite so far removed from a state of nature as his house is.
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