t some kind of beauty into the reproduction if it is to be
esteemed above any other manufactured article--if not beauty of
form, then beauty of color or of meaning or at least of execution.
Similarly, when a man disposes the surface of the soil with an eye
to crops alone he is an agriculturist; when he grows plants for
their beauty as isolated objects he is a horticulturist; but when
he disposes ground and plants together to produce organic beauty of
effect, he is an artist with the best.

Yet though all the fine arts are thus akin in general purpose they
differ each from each in many ways. And in the radical differences
which exist between the landscape-gardener's and all the others we
find some reasons why its affinity with them is so commonly ignored.
One difference is that it uses the same materials as nature herself.
In what is called "natural" gardening it uses them to produce effects
which under fortunate conditions nature might produce without
man's aid. Then, the better the result, the less likely it is to be
recognized as an artificial--artistic--result. The more perfectly the
artist attains his aim, the more likely we are to forget that he
has been at work. In "formal" gardening, on the other hand, nature's
materials are disposed and treated in frankly unnatural ways; and
then--as a more or less intelligent love for natural beauty is very
common to-day, and an intelligent eye for art is rare--the artist's
work is apt to be resented as an impertinence, denied its right to its
name, called a mere contorting and disfiguring of his materials.

Again, the landscape-gardener's art differs from all others in the
unstable character of its productions. When surfaces are modeled and
plants arranged, nature and the artist must work a long time together
before the true result appears; and when once it has revealed itself,
day to day attention will be forever needed to preserve it from the
deforming effects of time. It is easy to see how often neglect or
interference must work havoc with the best intentions, how often the
passage of years must travesty or destroy the best results, how rare
must be the cases in which a work of landscape art really does justice
to its creator.

Still another thing which affects popular recognition of the art as
such is our lack of clearly understood terms by which to speak of it
and of those who practice it. "Gardens" once meant pleasure-grounds of
every kind and "gardener" then had an a