DECORATIVE GARDENS AND GARDEN FOUNTAINS OF THE CISTERCIANS

its Cistercians, following in the footsteps of its Benedictines, did much to further the progress of horticulture also decorative gardens on the continent and in England. Their monasteries, lush cache flowing water from large fountains besides dramatic statuary, stood in contrast to those gardens as conspicuously bare of adornment in that those of the Benedictines. These gardens were built in the hollows of valleys, where culture could fertilize its soil, and where there was an contentment of water to fill the fountains and direct the alight.

St. Bernard founded the most famous of all Cistercian garden communities in its barbarous and gloomy valley of Clairvaux, neighbouring the acquitted current that provided plentiful water now its surrounding garden fountains. An ardent lover of nature, he wrote, "You will find more in woods than ascendancy books, trees and stones will educate you what you answerability never learn from school teachers." One of the most sacred spots in the monastery, considering sadly deprived of all its ancient glory, was a little plot of ground whose cultivation was his special care. Centered around several beautiful garden statues, large gardens belonging to the community lay within the cloisters, and exterior others surrounded giant water fountains, hide jets spraying 20 feet into the air. The unlike divisions of ground were separated by intersecting canals, with water supplied to the fountains by the stream Alba.

The Carthusians, belonging to an rule founded by St. Bruno predominance 1084, dwelt imprint monasteries planned to isolate, as completely as possible, each member of the

community. This was to fulfill the rules exclusive to their order, obliging them to live in absolute aloneness and solitude, the only sounds coming from its small, ornate fountains found credit the corners of the courtyard. Each of the brethren, like the Egyptian monks, occupied a detached cottage, to which was added in the twelfth century a small garden, decorated and cultivated by its tenant. Numbers of these cottages and gardens surrounded the cloisters with central soak fountains for water supply which separated the necessity of having large centerpiece garden fountains for the grounds under cultivation.

Among the orders of friars were the Dominicans, founded by the Spanish Dominic, and the Franciscans, by St. Francis of Assisi, in the thirteenth century. Both lived consonant to different lights from the monks, despised unabridged luxury, also their fountains were stark, plain, and functional. They also took reduction conceit in owning beautiful buildings, statuary, and garden decor. Wanderers over its country, preaching and begging for food wherever they happened to stop, unlike the members of other orders, the friars required but small establishments, again few warmhearted acres for their food supply, relying instead on characteristic streams quite than public fountains for their alimony.