THE 



GARDENER. 



OCTOBER 1871. 



PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



HIS island of ours is being studded with gardens and 

 dressed grounds, esi^ecially in the neighbourhood of our 

 large towns and centres of commerce, with a rapidity which 

 was never dreamt of thirty years ago. Mercantile men, 

 who were then content to live in the upper stories of their shops and 

 warehouses, are not now satisfied to be in "cities pent, "but have removed 

 their domestic retreats into the country, and are there surrounding them- 

 selves with sources of recreation and enjoyment much more wholesome 

 and invigorating than are possible in a purely town life. Next to 

 their heart, after a comfortable villa or mansion, lies a garden to dress and 

 enjoy — a desire the mostwise and legitimate, and that was recognised and 

 provided for on man's advent to this world. To the great majority of 

 such possessors of a country home, a very large feu or freehold would 

 amount to nothing less than an undesirable encumbrance and expense ; 

 still we believe it to be a general and commendable desire that their 

 few acres should be made to look as spacious and secluded as the art 

 of the landscape-gardener can make them. That a comparatively small 

 area of ground can be so laid out as to make it appear much more 

 extensive than it really is, and that a larger space is capable of apparent 

 contraction, are efi'ects or rather illusions amply illustrated in the class 

 of properties to which we are now more especially alluding ; and we do 

 not know that this is any more applicable to suburban residences than 

 to more pretentious country-seats. 



The illusion of contractedness is well illustrated in those cases 

 where the mansion is approached and surrounded by narrow strips of 

 roads and walks, where intricate groups of small flower-beds are closely 



