INTRODUCTION

Summary

GARDENING, in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is as superior to landskip painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion of fancy; a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to the spots from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm, or a riding; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to shew all the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects, to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the objects of nature are still his only materials. His first enquiry, therefore, must be into the means by which those effects are attained in nature, which he is to produce; and into those properties in the objects of nature, which should determine him in the choice and arrangement of them.

Nature, always simple, employs but four materials in the composition of her scenes, ground, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accommodation of men. Each of these again admits of varieties in figure, dimensions, colour, and situation. Every landskip is composed of these parts only; every beauty in a landskip depends on the application of their several varieties.