51 I THE GARDENER. [Nov. 



The kitchen-garden, if economically managed and cropped, will also 

 yield a good return for the labour expended upon it, besides having a 

 constant supply of crisp, fresh vegetables, which cannot be purchased 

 in good condition at some seasons of the year at any price. 



The keep of pleasure and ornamental grounds are frequently, and, as 

 I think, very unfairly, included as bad debts against the paying depart- 

 ments of the garden, but I have nothing whatever to do with them 

 here. 



We have now three walls left — the east, which is usually occupied 

 with Apricots and Pears; the west with Plums, with perhaps a stray 

 Peach or Nectarine at the most favourable angle connecting the two 

 walls ; and the north is usually employed for growing Morello Cherries 

 and Kitchen Plums. 



The north wall on the south side, where the situation renders it prac- 

 ticable, is generally furnished with Peach and Apricot trees. Now for 

 results. Most of the Apricot and Peach trees on south walls are dead 

 this year, and will have to be replaced. There were a few Plums on 

 west walls ; but on north situations they cracked on approaching the 

 ripening stage, through constant saturation, and were for the most part 

 rendered unfit for use ; and Morello Cherries, which were laden with 

 blossom, dropped nearly all their fruit about or previous to the stoning 

 period. This is no coloured or exaggerated statement, but a simple 

 revelation of painful facts. In the formation of new gardens the 

 altered conditions of climate would suggest to any ordinary observant 

 eye that bare brick walls are a misnomer of the past ; and whether gar- 

 dens of the future are to be large or small, I think there will not be 

 much difficulty in propounding a more profitable mode of enclosure 

 than the piling together of a lot of bricks. 



The cheapness of glass, and now the lowering of artisans' wages, 

 together with the skill of the modern horticultural builder, with the 

 practical gardener "guiding the helm/' would, I think, enable us, if 

 we only put our heads together, to devise a plan which would supplant 

 the present unprofitable one of enclosing gardens. 



All previous experience points to glass-houses as being the best sub- 

 stitutes for brick walls. The houses should be light and roomy, and 

 have a flow and return hot-water pipe along the front, for the purpose 

 of equalising the discrepancy between the day and night temperatures 

 in the spring. 



Unheated houses are certainly better than bare walls, but the addi- 

 tion of a little piping would be more than compensated for in value in 

 a good succession of regular crops. Span-houses would give a double 

 crop, and are very accommodating for giving air in boisterous weather: 

 raised restricted borders would be the idea, as giving a minimum of 

 labour and quick returns. When piercing winds are prevalent in the 

 spring, the situation might be modified by the skill of the architect, so 

 that heat enclosed in the afternoons of sunny days, or artificial heat 



