Cultivating Plants in Walls. 57 



disposition of such plants, any more than for the comparative 

 choice of trained shrubs, or scattered flowers and plants, or a 

 mixture of both. In all cases it is a question of pure taste, 

 or of effect ; but it belongs to the department of the painter, 

 rather than the gardener ; and to him especially, the careful 

 student in foregrounds, who best can judge of the power and 

 effect of forms and colours near to the eye, and who alone 

 can regulate those in Nature, as they would form the principle 

 of distribution in his own imitations of her. Fortunate, in- 

 deed, would it be for the art of ornamental horticulture, if it 

 were made a branch of the landscape painter's office, not of 

 the gardener's ; nor will the flower-garden and the shrubbery 

 ever become what they may be rendered, until this is done, 

 or till the ornamenting gardener shall add a knowledge of 

 landscape, through the study and practice of art, to his other 

 qualifications. That it is not so in this country, that such is 

 not even suspected to be the true and only road to beauty of 

 this nature, is a proof, among a thousand others, of the 

 almost universal ignorance of art, the almost universal absence 

 of real taste and knowledge, which, in spite of the as universal 

 and daily pretensions to a knowledge of pictures, pervades the 

 opulent, and the otherwise educated, in Great Britain. But 

 I must proceed to another branch of this subject, to matters 

 of detail. 



That a very large catalogue of plants, including many very 

 ornamental flowers, can and do grow out of the interstices of 

 masonry, will shortly be seen in the subjoined catalogue ; 

 limited as that is, from being almost confined to our own 

 native plants. The fact is familiar to botanists generally, 

 though such a catalogue has never yet been made. And while 

 they know also that many plants prefer the surfaces or crevices 

 of rocks to the freer soil, it will be found that these are 

 equally willing to grow out of walls. Yet as a matter of 

 practice, a few words are requisite on the nature, on the 

 structure or texture of the wall in which some plants will grow 

 more freely than others. Such remarks must be here made 

 general, as it would have immeasurably prolonged this paper 

 to specify them as to each plant ; a few occasional notes or 

 remarks must serve the purpose of information as to some of 

 the most remarkable. 



