Cultivating Plants in Walls. 55 



trudes itself disagreeably. Sometimes, a peculiar form in the 

 ground about the house or garden renders walls, the support 

 of terraces or otherwise, indispensable ; and in similar places 

 staircases of masonry are demanded for communication, while 

 the abandonment of any architectural plan or structure in 

 these, renders that a source of absolute deformity which was 

 once turned towards the general good effect of the domain. 

 Thus also may I point at the walls of hothouses, green- 

 houses, and so forth, often interfering with the beauty of the 

 flower-garden, with which they are so frequently associated, 

 and very especially so, where brick, and not stone, is the 

 material. 



But not to dwell further on these cases, it needs not be said 

 that since the masonry about gardens has now abandoned all 

 attempts at beauty, whether in the disposition, design, or exe- 

 cution, it is in almost every instance a deformity, and often to 

 so great an extent as to injure materially the general effect of 

 an ornamental garden, at least where taste has been called on 

 to preside. 



That indeed needs not be urged, since it is acknowledged 

 in the attempts at concealment by means of trailing shrubs, 

 the only remedy in use, yet not the only applicable one, and 

 one also which, in some cases, cannot be applied ; while, fur- 

 ther, in others, the effect which it produces is not the best that 

 could be obtained. There are many of the cases alluded to, 

 such as in terraces and staircases, or in very low walls, in- 

 cisures, and narrow passages between walls, where trained 

 shrubs are inconvenient or inapplicable. But not to enume- 

 rate all the objections to this system, there is also a question 

 of taste here involved. In the first place, the number of 

 shrubs capable of being thus trained is limited, and thus we 

 are cramped in point of variety, and not less perhaps in that 

 important circumstance in horticulture, the succession of 

 flowers. And these plants are also all shrubs, which, though 

 they include more than one rose, the jessamine, clematis, 

 honeysuckle, and other flowers of great sweetness and beauty, 

 form still but a limited list, and a list which, in any one place 

 or spot," will always be small, from the great space which any 

 one plant occupies. 



