I am gratified to have the good opinion which led you to think me the author of an article in the “Gardeners’ Monthly,” quoted in The Garden of July 1, and which you pleasantly make the occasion for showing how you and I, from our different points of view, may observe a subject of common interest. You rightly assume that I have been placed by circumstances in a position to regard the relation between the professions of landscape gardening and architecture with more than usual interest. I must confess, however, that as far as this relation has a bearing on the question of professional education, I yet stand a little too much in a waiting and enquiring attitude to write upon it with satisfaction. Still if you care to know my view of the subject, you are entitled to have an authentic report of it, and so far as I can give you this, I will do so with pleasure. It has long been a practice to introduce temples, pagodas, pavilions, “ruins,” bridges, arches, obelisks, and other monuments, in works of landscape gardening, not alone where they were required by considerations of health and convenience, but with a view to give interest, character, and finish to the scenes in which they appear. In the war on this practice which you are leading, I claim to be with you. With, perhaps, a single justifiable exception, [224] no architectural object has ever yet been introduced in any work of landscape gardening with my consent which was not first devised with a view to some other purpose than of display or effect in the landscape. But what are the grounds of objection to the practice? To find and substantiate them, I think it is necessary to see, more clearly than most intelligent men seem ready to do, in what the essence of landscape gardening consists. Loudon, after making an extended study of the manner in which the term is used by a series of authors, says (§ 7181, Ency. of Card.) of a simple example: — “All the parts unite in forming a whole which the eye can comprehend at once and examine without distraction. Were this principle not prevalent, the groups of trees, the lake, and the building would only please when considered separately, and the result would be as poor a production as a machine, the wheels of which are accurately finished and nicely polished, but which do not act in concert so as to effect the intended movement.”

The objection, then, to monumental and architectural objects in works of landscape gardening is this, that, as a rule, they are not adapted to contribute to any concerted effect, but are likely to demand attention to themselves in particular, distracting the mind from the contemplation of the landscape as such, and disturbing its suggestions to the imagination. But the object of producing an effect on the imagination being to make the life of man more agreeable, war on architectural objects may be carried too far whenever the objects which it removes are likely to add more to the satisfaction of life than they deducted from it by their injury to the landscape. Where the number or extent of artificial objects thus called for is large as compared with the ground to be operated upon, landscape gardening, properly speaking, is out of place; gardening material should then be made to support, strengthen, and aggrandise architectural design. But there are intermediate cases where the landscape gardener, as such, will neither retire from the field nor refuse to yield anything of landscape effect to convenience. If, in laying out a ground which is to be used by a hundred thousand people of all classes, we seek to have no more numerous or more substantial artificial structures than we should if it were to be used only by a quiet, private family and its guests, we shall over-reach ourselves. It is better that the ultimate special requirements of the situation should be foreseen from the outset, that provisions for them should be ample, that the necessary structures, however inconspicuously they may be placed, should be substantial, and their real character not only undisguised but artistically manifested, and that, finally, they should become as far as possible (preserving the above conditions) modest, harmonious, and consistent elements of a general landscape design, in which no more ambitious landscape motives are to be admitted than will allow them to be so assimilated. In such cases it is obvious that the architect would work with reference to the same general idea as the gardener, and should take pride and pleasure in subordinating his art to it. It follows that no architect is perfectly fit for the duty who cannot enter heartily into the spirit of a general design embodying [225] landscape considerations; considerations, for example, of the modelling of ground-surface and of the disposition of foliage, as to density and colour and shade and sky-line. It is to be said that architects are often shamefully ignorant in this respect, and I have no doubt that they are sometimes somewhat conceited and presumptuous in their ignorance. But we do not, as a rule, find that men trained as shoemakers have a propensity to chequer their hats with leather, nor men trained as hatters to slash their boots with felt; and I do not believe that it is a necessary result of properly educating an architect that he should be irresistibly disposed to patch a lawn with bricks and mortar. Whenever such a mania manifests itself, we may be sure it signifies too crude, not too refined a professional training.

But our present business is rather with the question of the education of landscape gardeners than of architects. Let me ask then, if it be a just cause of reproach to an architect that he cannot comprehend, and therefore cannot avoid overdoing his proper part in a landscape design, whether it is not equally true that the landscape gardener, who cannot upon occasion work hand-in-hand with the architect cheerfully, loyally, and with fore-reaching sympathy, is unqualified for his duty? Practical occasion for this close alliance of the two professions is not uncommon; indeed, in the greater number of cases where either is called in, there is to be a building or group of buildings, the site, aspect, elevation and outline of which cannot be properly determined without an understanding as to how the adjoining grounds are to be managed; as to where an approach is to be laid, as to where trees are to close the view and lawns open it, as to where the surface is to be gentle and quiet, and as to where it is to be abrupt, broken, and picturesque. On the other hand, it is equally impossible to properly design the walks and drives, the slopes, lawns and foliage, without regard to the position, the height, the breadth, the openings, the skylines, and even the decorative details of the buildings. There is then, properly, no distinctive field of general design for each profession; there is only a distinctive field of operations under the general design, the landscape gardener being responsible in the outlying parts of that of which the special field of the architect is the centre. The house comes first, because shelter is the first necessity, and it is only with increasing wealth and refinement that the garden part grows out of it. In the familiar aphorism of Lord Bacon, the art of pleasure-gardening is thus regarded as a higher development of the art of architecture; and, in fact, if we look to the origin of the word we shall find that an art worker in soils and living plants is as accurately an architect as one who is confined to brick and mortar. But you suggest that if the landscape gardener interests himself in architecture and other fine arts, it will be likely to overmuch distract his mind from another class of interests which, if not essentially, are yet closely connected with landscape gardening, such, for example, as those of tropical botany and exotic horticulture. The range of study which is called for in these is already so greatly extended that simply to call by name the various plants that are to be found under glass in England, a man [226] must have gone through an amount of special mental discipline which would have been appalling to a gardener of fifty years ago. And yet this range is rapidly enlarging, and no one can guess where it will end. If, then, a young man, in addition to the study necessary to the practice of landscape gardening pure and simple, is to make himself master of tropical botany and exotic horticulture, and a perfect adept in all other branches of botany, I question if there will not come in time another danger to the art of more gravity than that which I am disposed to apprehend exists in its disalliance with architecture.

To recognise what I mean, please ask yourself what is the one sure product which any professional education in landscape gardening must be adapted to cultivate? It surely is that of a special sensibility to the characteristic charms of broad, simple, quiet landscape compositions, united with a power of analysing these charms, and of conceiving how they may be reproduced through other compositions adapted to different topographical circumstances and different requirements of convenience; and this united again with a power of organising and directing means through which, after many years, these conceptions may be realised. In order to acquire such a wide range of information and of skill as will before long evidently be required of a gardener professing to be equipped at all points, a man of ordinary abilities must begin young, and must for some years be thoroughly absorbed in his work. This cannot occur without a strong tendency to establish a propensity to regard trees and plants from mental points of view in which the special qualities of each are to be of interest only as they favourably affect broad harmonies of landscape. It appears to me that the likeness of the materials and processes of botanical and exotic gardening to those of landscape gardening, instead of being an advantage in this respect, really establishes an insidious danger greater than that which you apprehend from an interest in an art dealing with such different materials and processes as that of architecture. It is a matter of history that the revolution in which landscape gardening originated was practically led more than by any other man by one (his monument should be in Westminster Abbey) who was educated as a coach painter, grew from that to be an historical painter, from that again wandered as a student of the fine arts in general into Italy, and finally on his return started in business as an architect before making his first imperfect essay in landscape gardening. How we should now rank his more mature work, and that of his contemporaries, few of whom were gardeners bred from youth, is an interesting question, for the profitable study of which there may yet be opportunity in England. How we should rank it as an arboretum, how we should rank it with regard to brilliancy of colouring, how as a living museum of botany, how as an exhibition of the fashionable plants of the day, there can be no doubt; but I mean what should we think of it as a work of art? what would be its influence on the imagination? We know that in its day it compelled the unbounded admiration of the most cultivated people, not only of England but of all Europe, and we may presume that if it lacked the incident and varied interest of modern [227] work, it was not without some impressive poetical qualities. We may be sure, I think, that the profession of landscape gardening has not since been gaining as steadily in power to affect the imagination as it has gained in working material and in science. It is possible that it has lost something; and if so, I should judge from descriptions, and from a few old engravings, that it was in the qualities of breadth, consistency of expression, subordination of all materials used to a general ideal simplicity, tranquility, and repose. I do not want to give undue importance to this suggestion, but it is obvious that defects with reference to these qualities are precisely what should be expected to result from an overlong absorption of mind in questions of classification and nomenclature, from an excess of interest in conservatory, winter garden, terrace garden, and bedding-out effects, and from the resulting necessity of a forced retreat from the border grounds of allied arts and professions.

My alter ego, if you please, of the “Gardeners’ Monthly” apparently regards the title of landscape architect as one in which an assumption of superiority is affected toward those who beforetime have been called landscape gardeners. I do not see the assumption, but to remove the suspicion, however it arises, in at least one case, I will mention that the word architect, as applied to the manager of a public work, of which landscape gardening should be the chief element, was here in America adopted directly from the French, and was first fastened upon the occupant of such an office, who was not an architect in the English usage of the term, in disregard of his repeated remonstrances. As it is not wholly without an etymological propriety, as it has a certain special value in addressing a public which, in my humble judgment, is too much rather than too little inclined to regard landscape considerations as one thing and architectural considerations as quite another, and as it has now been fairly accepted as an intelligible term on this side of the water, I will submit to whatever reproach must follow on the other in subscribing myself, in all goodwill,