8 THE GARDENER. [Jan. 



is kept tolerably fertilised with farmyard manure. The plough and 

 harrow seem all that is necessary to cultivate the soil sufficiently for 

 the produce of first-rate vegetables of all the annual varieties, such as 

 Peas, Cabbages, Turnips, Beet, Spinach, Onions, Lettuces, &c. And 

 as to the question of expense as compared with garden-culture, field- 

 culture, with its comparatively superior return, is at least performed 

 at one-half the outlay. The conclusion we wish to draw is one which 

 has been advocated before in these pages, if our memory serves us 

 right, and that is, the abandonment of kitchen-gardening in walled-in 

 enclosures, interrupted and mixed up with small fruit growing and 

 fruit-trees, and migrating to some open field of good aspect, and 

 sheltered by plantations or hedges, where the half pleasure-ground 

 character of the kitchen-garden would be abandoned, and only two 

 objects kept in view : first, the raising of the best possible vegetables ; 

 and second, keeping the ground entirely free of weeds, eschewing 

 Box edgings, gravel walks, shears, rollers, and iron rakes, as well as 

 brick walls. 



There was once a period in the history of our country, and a long 

 one, when the kitchen-garden was the orchard and flower-garden and 

 pleasure-ground ; indeed, the representative of all that is now meant 

 by the gardens of a country residence. The Abbeys and Priories of 

 olden times often had their orchard under their windows, like the 

 farmer of the present day. The residence of the Russian landowner 

 and gentleman, of one storey, thatched and of irregular shape, is sur- 

 rounded by large kitchen-gardens, his ideas being only now on a level 

 with ours of 200 years ago, so far as horticulture is concerned. Of 

 course we do not speak of the palaces of the "Woronzows or Xessel- 

 rodes or GortschakofTs. Nowadays in the country our idea of 

 beautiful gardens does not embrace brick walls or half acres of Cab- 

 bages ; but green lawns, and walks of gentle curvature bright and 

 smooth, and shrubberies, and specimens of the trees of many climes 

 — of the empire, in fact ; of China and Japan, and the far west land 

 facing the North Pacific, and maybe from the mountains, the tops of 

 which our soldiers are now espying far away in the horizon, capped 

 with snow, beyond the Khyber. We like to keep our kitchen-garden- 

 ing out of sight of our drawing-room windows, as we would our 

 turnip-fields, and there really is some other reason why we should do 

 so besides the one of taste. 



The kitchen-garden not now engaging its former place as a part of 

 the pleasure-grounds, is in consequence often much neglected, and the 

 labour drawn away to the pleasure-ground proper; the vegetable crops 

 are, therefore, not so good as they might be, and the kitchen-garden 

 untidy besides, as now arranged with rows of fruit-trees, obstructing 



