Part 27 (1/2)
Undoubtedly as a general rule, the undulating curve in garden scenery is preferable to straight lines or abrupt turns or sharp angles, but if there should happen to be only a few yards between the outer gateway and the house, could anything be more fantastical or preposterous than an attempt to give the ground between them a serpentine irregularity? Even in the most s.p.a.cious grounds the walks should not seem too studiously winding, as if the short turns were meant for no other purpose than to perplex or delay the walker.[118] They should have a natural sweep, and seem to meander rather in accordance with the nature of the ground and the points to which they lead than in obedience to some idle sport of fancy. They should not remind us of Gray's description of the divisions of an old mansion:
Long pa.s.sages that lead to nothing.
Foot-paths in small gardens need not be broader than will allow two persons to walk abreast with ease. A s.p.a.cious garden may have walks of greater breadth. A path for one person only is inconvenient and has a mean look.
I have made most of the foregoing observations in something of a spirit of opposition to those Landscape gardeners who I think once carried a true principle to an absurd excess. I dislike, as much as any one can, the old topiary style of our remote ancestors, but the talk about free nature degenerated at last into downright cant, and sheer extravagance; the reformers were for bringing weeds and jungle right under our parlour windows, and applied to an acre of ground those rules of Landscape gardening which required a whole county for their proper exemplification. It is true that Milton's Paradise had ”no nice art” in it, but then it was not a little suburban pleasure ground but a world.
When Milton alluded to private gardens, he spoke of their trimness.
Retired Leisure That in _trim_ gardens takes his pleasure.
The larger an estate the less necessary is it to make it merely neat, and symmetrical, especially in those parts of the ground that are distant from the house; but near the architecture some degree of finish and precision is always necessary, or at least advisable, to prevent the too sudden contrast between the straight lines and artificial construction of the dwelling and the flowing curves and wild but beautiful irregularities of nature unmoulded by art. A garden adjacent to the house should give the owner a sense of _home_. He should not feel himself abroad at his own door. If it were only for the sake of variety there should be some distinction between the private garden and the open field. If the garden gradually blends itself with a s.p.a.cious park or chase, the more the ground recedes from the house the more it may legitimately a.s.sume the aspect of a natural landscape. It will then be necessary to appeal to the eye of a landscape gardener or a painter or a poet before the owner, if ignorant of the principles of fine art, attempt the completion of the general design.
I should like to see my Native friends who have extensive grounds, vary the shape of their tanks, but if they dislike a more natural form of water, irregular or winding, and are determined to have them with four sharp corners, let them at all events avoid the evil of several small tanks in the same ”compound.” A large tank is more likely to have good water and to retain it through the whole summer season than a smaller one and is more easily kept clean and gra.s.sy to the water's edge. I do not say that it would be proper to have a piece of winding water in a small compound--that indeed would be impracticable. But even an oval or round tank would be better than a square one.[119]
If the Native gentry could obtain the aid of tasteful gardeners, I would recommend that the level land should be varied with an occasional artificial elevation, nicely sloped or graduated; but Native _malees_ would be sure to aim rather at the production of abrupt round k.n.o.bs resembling warts or excrescences than easy and natural undulations of the surface.
With respect to lawns, the late Mr. Speede recommended the use of the _doob_ gra.s.s, but it is so extremely difficult to keep it clear of any intermixture of the _ooloo_ gra.s.s, which, when it intrudes upon the _doob_ gives the lawn a patchwork and shabby look, that it is better to use the _ooloo_ gra.s.s only, for it is far more manageable; and if kept well rolled and closely shorn it has a very neat, and indeed, beautiful appearance. The lawns in the compound of the Government House in Calcutta are formed of _ooloo_ gla.s.s only, but as they have been very carefully attended to they have really a most brilliant and agreeable aspect. In fact, their beautiful bright green, in the hottest summer, attracts even the notice and admiration of the stranger fresh from England. The _ooloo_ gra.s.s, however, on close inspection is found to be extremely coa.r.s.e, nor has even the finest _doob_ the close texture and velvet softness of the gra.s.s of English lawns.
Flower beds should be well rounded. They should never have long narrow necks or sharp angles in which no plant can have room to grow freely.
Nor should they be divided into compartments, too minute or numerous, for so arranged they must always look petty and toy-like. A lawn should be as open and s.p.a.cious as the ground will fairly admit without too greatly limiting the s.p.a.ce for flowers. Nor should there be an unnecessary multiplicity of walks. We should aim at a certain breadth of style. Flower beds may be here and there distributed over the lawn, but care should be taken that it be not too much broken up by them. A few trees may be introduced upon the lawn, but they must not be placed so close together as to prevent the growth of the gra.s.s by obstructing either light or air. No large trees should be allowed to smother up the house, particularly on the southern and western sides, for besides impeding the circulation through the rooms of the most wholesome winds of this country, they would attract mosquitoes, and give an air of gloominess to the whole place.
Natives are too fond of over-crowding their gardens with trees and shrubs and flowers of all sorts, with no regard to individual or general effects, with no eye to arrangement of size, form or color; and in this hot and moist climate the consequent exclusion of free air and the necessary degree of light has a most injurious influence not only upon the health of the resident but upon vegetation itself. Neither the finest blossoms nor the finest fruits can be expected from an overstocked garden. The native malee generally plants his fruit trees so close together that they impede each other's growth and strength. Every Englishman when he enters a native's garden feels how much he could improve its productiveness and beauty by a free use of the hatchet. Too many trees and too much embellishment of a small garden make it look still smaller, and even on a large piece of ground they produce confused and disagreeable effects and indicate an absence of all true judgment.
This practice of over-filling a garden is an instance of bad taste, a.n.a.logous to that which is so conspicuously characteristic of our own countrymen in India with respect to their apartments, which look more like an upholsterer's show-rooms or splendid ornament-shops than drawing-rooms or parlours. There is scarcely s.p.a.ce enough to turn in them without fracturing some frail and costly bauble. Where a garden is over-planted the whole place is darkened, the ground is green and slimy, the gra.s.s thin, sickly and straggling, and the trees and shrubs deficient in freshness and vigor.
Not only should the native gentry avoid having their flower-borders too thickly filled,--they should take care also that they are not too broad.
We ought not to be obliged to leave the regular path and go across the soft earth of the bed to obtain a sight of a particular shrub or flower.
Close and entangled foliage keeps the ground too damp, obstructs wholesome air, and harbours snakes and a great variety of other noxious reptiles. Similar objections suggest the propriety of having no shrubs or flowers or even a gra.s.s-plot immediately under the windows and about the doors of the house. A well exposed gravel or brick walk should be laid down on all sides of the house, as a necessary safeguard against both moisture and vermin.
I have spoken already of the unrivalled beauty of English gravel. It cannot be too much admired. _Kunkur_[120] looks extremely smart for a few weeks while it preserves its solidity and freshness, but it is rapidly ground into powder under carriage wheels or blackened by occasional rain and the permanent moisture of low grounds when only partially exposed to the sun and air. Why should not an opulent Rajah or Nawaub send for a cargo of beautiful red gravel from the gravel pits at Kensington? Any English House of Agency here would obtain it for him. It would be cheap in the end, for it lasts at least five times as long as the kunkur, and if of a proper depth admits of repeated turnings with the spade, looking on every turn almost as fresh as the day on which it was first laid down.
Instead of brick-bat edgings, the wealthy Oriental n.o.bleman might trim all his flower-borders with the green box-plant of England, which would flourish I suppose in this climate or in any other. Cobbett in his _English Gardener_ speaks with so much enthusiasm and so much to the purpose on the subject of box as an edging, that I must here repeat his eulogium on it.
The box is at once the most efficient of all possible things, and the prettiest plant that can possibly be conceived; the color of its leaf; the form of its leaf; its docility as to height, width and shape; the compactness of its little branches; its great durability as a plant; its thriving in all sorts of soils and in all sorts of aspects; _its freshness under the hottest sun_, and its defiance of all shade and drip: these are the beauties and qualities which, for ages upon ages, have marked it out as the chosen plant for this very important purpose.
The edging ought to be clipped in the winter or very early in spring on both sides and at top; a line ought to be used to regulate the movements of the shears; it ought to be clipped again in the same manner about midsummer; and if there be _a more neat and beautiful thing than this in the world, all that I can say is, that I never saw that thing_.
A small green edging for a flower bed can hardly be too _trim_; but large hedges with tops and sides cut as flat as boards, and trees fantastically shaped with the shears into an exhibition as full of incongruities as the wildest dream, have deservedly gone out of fas.h.i.+on in England. Poets and prose writers have agreed to ridicule all verdant sculpture on a large scale. Here is a description of the old topiary gardens.
These likewise mote be seen on every side The shapely box, of all its branching pride Ungently shorn, and, with preposterous skill To various beasts, and birds of sundry quill Transformed, and human shapes of monstrous size.
Also other wonders of the sportive shears Fair Nature misadorning; there were found Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers With spouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground In living box, by cunning artists traced, And galleys trim, or on long voyage bound, But by their roots there ever anch.o.r.ed fast.
_G. West_.
The same taste for torturing nature into artificial forms prevailed amongst the ancients long after architecture and statuary had been carried to such perfection that the finest British artists of these times can do nothing but copy and repeat what was accomplished so many ages ago by the people of another nation. Pliny, in his description of his Tuscan villa, speaks of some of his trees having been cut into letters and the forms of animals, and of others placed in such regular order that they reminded the spectator of files of soldiers.[121] The Dutch therefore should not bear all the odium of the topiary style of gardening which they are said to have introduced into England and other countries of Europe. They were not the first sinners against natural taste.
The Hindus are very fond of formally cut hedges and trimmed trees. All sorts of verdant hedges are in some degree objectionable in a hot moist country, rife with deadly vermin. I would recommend ornamental iron railings or neatly cut and well painted wooden pales, as more airy, light, and cheerful, and less favorable to snakes and centipedes.
This is the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness alluded to, is now removed. ”The deliberation with which trees grow,”