284 MAEI, HEXAGONS : 



to be found in many gardens that have no small pretensions to 

 floriculture, and the gravel-walks and terraces, when soberly 

 examined, are found to be composed of materials that would not 

 suit a London artisan. Gravel will not do for him ; he must 

 have his pathway paved with something better, hewn stone, or, 

 at the very least, a kerb of stone and the rest pebbles. This 

 familiar example may serve to show that we are not so far ad- 

 vanced in this department of gardening as we would fain 

 believe ; and although our weeds be closely wedged together, 

 and form a matted surface which by courtesy we call grass 

 (although in reality it is no such thing), and although the rough 

 pebbles and smooth dirt mixed may be called a walk, the real 

 character of the article in question is in foul weather anything 

 but a place to walk upon. The great bulk of a grass and 

 gravel flower-garden is composed of weeds more or less shorn 

 to an even stubble, and of muddy pebbles more or less dry, as 

 the state of the weather and the drainage may be at the time 

 you make your examination. I know of only one exception to 

 tliis, and that is where the proprietor has a gravel-walk in-doors, 

 thereby insuring its condition in all weathers. 



Now what I would argue from all this is, that on account of 

 the immense bulk now occupied by coarse articles in our gar- 

 dens, there is no room left for really good things, and proprie- 

 tors will scarcely credit what an immense variety of rare and 

 beautiful plants can be cultivated in a very limited space when 

 that space is devoted solely to plants, still less would it be 

 credited that the great expense of the labour so loudly com- 

 plained of in gardens is for the high keeping of grass and gravel, 

 neither of which are necessary. 



My attention was first drawn to the expense of grass edgings 

 by observing that where ten men mowed a certain compartment 

 in a morning of two-and-a-half hours, it took one man five hours 

 to do the edging with the grass shears. In front of the principal 

 range of hot-houses at Alton Towers there is a terrace-walk 

 paved with hewn stone and edged with quadrant-shaped kerbing 

 of hewn stone: now the grass abutting upon this walk required 

 no grass shears to edge it, for the level action of the scythe or 

 of the mowing-machine left the edge quite smooth and clean. 

 Now if all the garden had been similarly edged, one-fifth of the 

 labour of grass-cutting would have been saved, and a garden 

 similarly paved would answer many important purposes which 

 gravel cannot serve, such as giving a clean, healthy promenade 

 in the few sunny hours of a winter's day, after the snow has been 

 swept off, when half-an-hour's exercise on a dry walk is no 

 unimportant matter. If walks were reduced in extent and im- 

 proved in quality, and if flower-plats showed less gross bulk and 



